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Jonathan  Edwards 
Ilii^h-Pricst  of  the  Nciv  En<rl(ind  (Jo/isric/ice 


The 
New  England  Conscience 

With  Typical  Examples  by 

JAMES  PHINNEY  MUNROE 

Author  of  "The  Educational  Ideal,"  "New 
Demands  in  Education,"  "Adventures  of  an 
Armv    Xurse."    "The    Munro    Clan"   Etc. 


Printed     by     RICHARD     G.     BADGER 

at  The  Gorham   Press  and  sold  by  him 

at  194  BoYLSTON  Street,  BOSTON,  and 

by  all  Vendors  of  choice  Books 


n^ 


Copyrigrht,  1915,  by  Richard  G.  Badger 
All  Rights  Reserved 


The  portrait  of  Abraham  Lincoln  facing  page  156 
is  used  through  the  kind  permission  of  The  Macmil- 
lan  Company',  publisher  of  "Abraham  Lincoln,  the 
Man  of  the  People,"  by  Norman  Hapgood,  in  which 
it  first  appeared. 


The  Gorham  Press,  Boston   U.  S.  A. 


CONTENTS 

Page 

I.     The  New  England  Conscience 9 

II.     Samuel    Adams:    The    New    England 

Democrat    19 

III,  The  Town  of  Lexington   43 

IV.  Josiah    Quincy:    The    New    England 

Aristocrat    59 

V.     The  Shays  Rebellion   89 

VI.     Destruction  of  the   Ursuline  Convent 

at  Charlestown,  Massachusetts   ...  117 

VII.     Theodore    Parker    140 

VIII.     Abraham  Lincoln   148 

IX.     The  Heart  of  the  United  States 163 

X.     The  Eternal  Feminine   184 

XI.     Madame  de  Maintenon    201 


LIST  OF  ILLUSTRATIONS. 

Rev.  Jonathan  Edwards,  D.  D.  Frontispiece 

{From  an  original  portrait  by  Moultrop) 

Facing  Page 

Samuel    Adams    20 

{From  the  painting  by  Copley^  in  the  pos- 
session of  Harvard  University) 

Hon.   Josiah   Quincy    60 

{From  the  painting  by  Gilbert  Stuart,  in 
the  possession  of  the  Museum  of  Fine 
Arts,  Boston) 

Ruins  of  the  Charlestown  Convent,  with  Old 

Middlesex   Canal    in    foreground 128 

{From  an  old  painting) 

Rev.   Theodore    Parker    140 

{From  the  lithograph  by  Grozelier,  made 
from  a  daguerreotype  by  L.  M.  Ives) 

Abraham  Lincoln    156 

{From  a  negative  made  at  Springfield,  III., 
June,  i860,  by  Alexander  Hesler  of  Chi- 
cago. Owned  by  Mr.  George  B.  Ayres 
of  Philadelphia) 

Madame  de   Maintenon   and   the   Duchess  of 

Burgundy    202 

{From  a  woodcut  after  the  painting  by 
Mignard) 


THE  NEW  ENGLAND  CONSCIENCE 


THE 

New    England 
Conscience 

I 

The  New  England  Conscience 

THE  old  New  England  Conscience  was 
an  admirable  selective  force,  picking  out 
the  ruggedest  from  the  English  stock, 
strengthening  it  by  a  fight  against  the 
wilderness,  proscribing  from  contact 
with  it  all  idleness,  ungodliness  and  frivolity.  A 
good  means  to  an  important  end,  but  in  itself  an  ill- 
favored  thing.  Economizing  and  concentrating  the 
forces  necessary  to  found  America,  it  was  narrow  as 
avarice,  morbid  as  egoism.  It  exalted  harsh,  un- 
lovely deeds  into  Heaven-inspired  acts,  and  was  blind 
to  all  human  purposes  but  death.  Those  early  New 
Englanders,  condemning  the  symbols  of  formalism, 
were  slaves  to  form.  Their  spiritual  life  was  a 
ceaseless  ceremonial,  their  pious  observances  were 
rigid  rules  of  etiquette  without  which  one  could 
obtain  neither  favor  nor  even  audience  of  the 
Almighty. 

This  spirit  of  caste,  largely  induced  by  their  geo- 
graphical isolation,  kept  our  ancestors  "not  provincial 
but  parochial."     It  fostered  a  condition  of  life  and 
a  type  of  character  doubtless  never  again  to  be  possi- 
9 


lO  New  England  Conscience 


ble  in  the  world's  history.  Having  done  its  work, 
having  founded  soundly  and  peopled  strongly  an  ex- 
ceptional region,  the  New  England  conscience  had 
no  further  necessity  of  being.  Those  whom  it  now 
tortures  with  its  hot  pincers  of  doubt  and  self-re- 
proach are  sacrificed  to  a  cause  long  since  won.  It 
is  not  now,  as  it  was  in  Edwards'  time,  "a  common 
Thing,  that  Persons  have  had  such  a  Sense  of  their 
own  Sinfulness,  that  they  have  thought  themselves 
to  be  the  worst  of  all,  and  that  none  ever  was  so 
vile  as  they."  On  the  contrary,  the  modern  ten- 
dency is  to  envelop  one's  self  and  all  one's  neighbors 
in  a  broad  mantle  of  indiscriminating  charity. 

The  genuine  New  England  conscience,  therefore, 
is  becoming  as  rare  as  those  Saurian  monsters  whose 
lonely  survivals  occasionally  affright  the  sailor.  It 
is  no  less  an  anachronism  than  the  formal,  man- 
nered speech  in  which  its  dread  decisions  were  em- 
bodied. Both  demanded  leisure,  and  haste  is  the 
dominant  characteristic  of  to-day.  The  not-yet- 
forgotten  packet  boats,  favored  by  winds  and  cur- 
rents, sometimes  crossed  the  turbulent  Atlantic  in 
two  weeks.  We,  burning  five  daily  three-hundred 
tons  of  coal,  follow  a  great  circle  straight  from  shore 
to  shore  and  call  ourselves  landed  when  we  sight 
the  outermost  beacon.  Having  made  the  discovery 
that  luxurj' — the  material  reward  of  life— -is  mainly 
a  question  of  transportation,  we  are  striving  to  an- 
nihilate time  and  space.  We  put  the  tropics  on 
wheels  to  stimulate  our  palates,  fling  ourselves 
around  the  world  for  a  summer's  holiday,  and  dream 
of  seeing  and  hearing  Covent  Garden  by  cable. 


The  New  England  Conscience  1 1 


Our  years,  if  we  care  to  make  them  so,  are  Cathay 
cycles  with  the  tedium  distilled  away.  Already  we 
are  launching  aerial  ships  and  are  turning  inquisi- 
tive, neighborly  eyes  towards  Mars.  The  insoluble 
mysteries  of  yesterday  are  the  schoolboy's  reading- 
lesson  of  to-day ;  and  the  Land  of  the  Anthropo- 
phagi is  the  picnic-ground  of  the  tourist.  The  mean- 
est among  us  must  have  such  a  stock  of  common 
knowledge  as,  a  century  ago,  would  have  made  a 
brave  show  at  college.  Our  careers  must  start  at 
a  point  where  those  of  many  of  our  ancestors  ended. 
Their  anxious,  year-long  problems  have  become  our 
five-minute  hesitations,  their  crises — two  or  three 
in  a  lifetime — our  daily  experiences.  Americans  are 
now  not  only  of  the  world,  they  are  of  a  world  that 
knows  and  avails  itself  of  steam  and  electricity,  that 
finds  the  air  too  dull  a  medium  for  intercommunica- 
tion and  seeks  to  use  in  place  of  it  the  subtler  ethers. 

Moreover,  we  have  emerged  not  only  from 
bucolic,  but  also  from  national  isolation.  We  have 
substituted  the  demi-tasse  for  pie.  While  Ameri- 
cans stood  like  village  gossips  measuring  one  another 
with  eyes  of  censure,  having  no  standards  beyond 
their  own  pettiness,  they  were  forced  into  hy- 
pocrisy, were  abnormally  sensitive,  pharisaical,  bom- 
bastic. They  had  no  choice  but  to  walk  in  the  path 
of  tradition,  a  path,  unfortunately,  which  led  back 
to  the  wilderness  days  when  there  was  little  except 
toil,  bitter  privation,  narrow  interests,  no  joy  in 
life.  Treading  this  narrow  road,  our  forebears 
dared  not  play,  dared  scarcely  think  of  a  world  dif- 
ferent from  that  in  which  they  found   themselves. 


12  New  England  Conscience 

lest  through  these  heresies  they  should  incur  the 
reproach  of  being  un-American. 

Within  the  past  fifty  years  we  have  broken 
through  the  imaginary  hedges  which  shut  us  out 
from  so  much  of  the  brightness  and  freedom  of  ex- 
istence. Within  the  next  twenty-five  years  we  shall 
have  become  the  most  cosmopolitan  country  in  the 
world.  Adaptable,  vigorous,  acute,  we  have  made 
that  difficult  first  trespass  upon  the  territory  of 
civilizations  older,  richer,  in  many  ways  better  than 
ours,  and  it  will  require  but  another  generation  for 
us  to  invade  every  corner  of  them,  appropriating  all 
that  can  make  us  happier  and  that  can  add  to  our 
wealth  in  those  things  of  life  which  endure. 

Because  we  are  subjugating  nature  and  living 
somewhat  at  ease,  are  we  therefore  materialistic  or, 
as  Carlyle  will  have  it,  swinish?  Rather  were  we 
such  in  being  slaves,  as  swine  are,  to  the  grosser 
elements  of  nature.  Because  we  are  living  rapidly 
and  richly  are  we  therefore  reckless?  Rather  were 
we  lumpish  in  not  learning  the  secrets  that  govern 
time  and  space.  Because  the  work  time  diminishes 
and  the  play  time  increases,  and  even  work,  with 
some  wise  souls,  is  becoming  a  sort  of  play,  are  we 
therefore  frivolous  and  spendthrift?  Rather  a  thou- 
sand times  spendthrift  were  we  in  wasting  and  abus- 
ing this  gift  of  life  in  hard,  dismal  labor,  unblessed 
by  a  glimpse  of  the  paradise  of  true  pleasure  whose 
unbarred  gate  we  refused  even  to  push  open. 

In  this  process  of  great  change,  however,  the 
America  of  the  newspapers  is,  without  question, 
flauntingly  materialistic.    That  it  should  be  so  tem- 


The  New  England  Conscience  13 


porarily  is  wholly  natural ;  that  it  should  remain  so 
is  utterly  beyond  belief.  For  there  are  new  forces 
every  day  growing,  strengthening  and  taking  defi- 
nite shape  which  are  certain  to  counteract  the  per- 
vading materalism  of  modern  life.  Those  forces  are 
the  new  conscience,  which  localizes  heaven  and  hell 
within  the  individual  instead  of  beyond  the  stars ; 
the  new  religion  of  service  which  finds  His  work 
waiting  to  be  done  on  every  street  corner ;  and  the 
new  gospel,  that  of  physical,  mental  and  spiritual 
umplicity. 

This  modern  type  of  conscience  has  developed  new 
concepts  of  religion.  Our  churches  may  be  emptier 
of  worshippers  than  when  the  tythingman  held  le- 
gal sway;  but  our  streets  and  houses  and  offices  are 
fuller  of  the  real  presence  of  God.  The  women's 
clubs,  the  men's  gatherings,  the  various  social  or- 
ganizations of  which  every  American  hamlet  has  at 
lea^t  one  are,  most  of  them,  when  viewed  too  closely, 
rather  absurd ;  looked  at  in  the  aggregate,  however, 
they  are  magnificent.  For  they  signalize  the  final 
emancipation  of  New  England  and  the  New  England 
spirit  from  the  reign  of  that  selfish  individualism 
which  sought  only  its  own  salvation.  The  modern 
individualists,  with  their  flaunting  of  vulgar  wealth, 
with  their  disregard  of  others'  rights,  with  their  le- 
gal and  illegal  grasping  of  everything  within  their 
reach,  hold  still,  of  course,  the  centre  of  the  stage; 
but  the  real  work  of  civilization  is  being  done  by 
those  thousands  and  tens  of  thousands  who,  wit- 
tingly or  unwittingly,  are  laboring  for  each  other 
and  for  the  uplifting  of  the  world. 


14  ]\ ew  England  Conscience 

One  of  the  most  inspiring  of  books  is  that  of  Dar- 
win upon  earth-worms,  wherein  he  shows  that  were 
it  not  for  the  making  of  leaf-mold  and  the  stirring  of 
the  soil  by  these  multitudinous,  industrious  crea- 
tures, the  earth  would  yield  no  crops,  and  animals 
— and  therefore  man — would  starve.  We  would 
like  to  feel  ourselves  under  the  guardianship  of  the 
stars;  instead  we  must  bow  the  knee  to  these  poor, 
blind  creatures  whom  we  scarcely  deign  to  use  as 
bait  for  fish.  We  would  like  to  believe  that  we  are 
really  governed  by  our  elected  rulers,  we  would  like 
to  think  that  our  fashions  are  set  by  dukes  and  their 
millionaire  duchesses,  we  would  like  to  imagine  that 
every  step  forward  in  civilization  is  taken  by  some 
panoplied  St.  George,  declaiming  in  the  limelight 
and  running  vice  through  its  scaly  body  with  the  vis- 
ible, triumphant  sword  of  virtue.  But  it  is  better 
for  us,  it  is  better  for  the  world  that  the  real  forces 
of  society,  of  politics,  of  civilization  are  humble,  si- 
lent, hidden,  like  the  earth-worms,  but,  like  them, 
are  ceaselessly  busy  in  making  an  ever  stronger  and 
richer  moral  soil  for  mankind. 

We  are  fed  daily  in  the  press  upon  the  short- 
comings, vanities  and  corruptions  of  federal  and 
state  officials ;  but  we  hear  almost  nothing  of  those 
obscurer  servants  of  the  government  who  are  work- 
ing everywhere  throughout  the  ramifications  of  the 
Republic, — this  one  protecting  the  public  health, 
that  one  developing  the  national  resources,  the  third 
opening  a  pathway  for  enlightenment,  and  all  serv- 
ing, not  mechanically  for  mere  pay,  but  zealously 
and  eagerly  for  the  upbuilding  of  a  higher  civiliza- 


The  New  England  Conscience  15 


tion  for  America.  We  learn  in  letters  six  inches 
high  when  a  millionaire  divorces  his  wife  or  amuses 
himself  in  some  other  way;  but  we  do  not  learn 
u  hen  this  mother  makes  some  great  sacrifice  for  her 
children,  when  that  father  refuses  to  perjure  him- 
>elf  lest  he  bring  shame  to  his  sons,  when  Smith, 
Brown  and  Robinson  get  together  determined  to 
make  the  little  spot  on  which  they  live  a  better 
place.  We  know  from  iterated  and  reiterated 
"muck-raking"  how  much  is  stolen,  squandered  and 
given  in  bribes  in  our  vast,  extravagant  cities;  but 
we  have  almost  no  way  of  finding  out  that  the  same 
slums  which  are  supposed  to  breed  these  evil  con- 
ditions are  filled  with  men  and  women  who  love  their 
adopted  country,  who  are  proud  of  their  city  and 
who  would  like  to  have  it  the  boast  rather  than  the 
shame  of  America,  but  who  do  not  know  how  as  yet 
to  fight  against  evils  the  causes  of  which  they  can- 
not comprehend.  We  know  some  truth  and  much 
fiction  about  the  rascals  in  political  life — for  it  is  the 
delight  of  the  rascals  who  are  out  to  throw  a  search- 
light upon  the  rascals  who  are  in — but  we  are  ignor- 
ant of  those  knots  of  men  and  women  who  are  stead- 
ily, silently  and  unselfishly  busy  in  influencing  this 
group,  in  educating  that  neighborhood,  in  purifying 
and  training  public  opinion  so  that  next  week,  or 
next  year,  or  in  the  next  decade,  it  will  demand  and 
will  enforce  reform.  1'o-day  such  a  group  of  re- 
formers is  ten  "cranks"  against  a  thousand  con- 
servative citizens;  some  day  in  the  certain  future, 
however,  it  will  be  a  thousand  citizens  against  ten 
reactionaries;   and   that   particular   moral   or  social 


l6  New  England  Conscience 


battle  will  have  been  won.  Meanwhile  that  first 
ten  will  have  broken  into  units  with  new  points  oi 
attachment  and  with  new — still  silent — ways  of 
progressing  towards  some  higher  vantage  ground  of 
morality  and  truth. 

The  modern  conscience  being  straightforward  and 
business-like,  we  are  eschewing  casuistry;  social  ser- 
vice being  the  plain  doing  of  the  next  thing  to  be 
done,  we  are  growing  ashamed  of  pretense  and  ar- 
tificiality. We  are  resolving  life,  therefore,  into  its 
elements  and  are  finding  the  highest  civilization  to 
be  synonymous  with  the  purest  simplicity.  The 
shut-in,  conventional,  censorious,  morally  dyspeptic 
existence  of  earlier  America  is  being  transformed 
into  the  out-door  living,  toleration,  friendliness  and 
genuine  democracy  of  to-day.  But  our  consciences 
still  demand  much  training,  our  working-together 
still  requires  to  be  educated  out  of  the  benumbing 
influences  of  long  generations  of  isolation,  the  rank 
and  file  of  us  must  still  be  taught  by  experience  the 
true  meaning  and  practice  of  simplicity.  Above  all, 
we  Americans,  and  especially  we  New  Englanders, 
need  to  learn  how  to  relax. 

A  real  art  is  that  of  relaxation.  One  to  be  re- 
garded soberly,  studied  earnestly,  and  taught  as  a 
part  of  youthful  education.  Most  men  are  as  ig- 
norant of  the  laws  of  pleasure  as  they  are  of  those 
of  health,  and  weary  themselves  with  sham  joys 
that,  secretly,  they  loathe.  Thence  arises,  in  no 
small  measure,  that  artificiality,  insincerity,  and  vul- 
gar pretense  which  obtrude  themselves  alike  at  the 
magnificent  "function"   and  at  the  humble  "socia- 


The  New  England  Conscience  17 


ble."  So-called  Society,  whether  it  be  of  the  city  or 
of  the  hamlet,  is  too  self-conscious  to  relax;  but  its 
votaries  must  have  some  relief,  and  upon  them  na- 
ture revenges  herself  by  leading  them  into  the  wild- 
est excesses  and  most  extravagant  inanities. 

The  inability  of  the  average  American  to  ex- 
tract even  a  portion  of  its  normal,  rational  pleasure 
from  his  life  befogs  the  judgment  of  the  visiting 
foreigner  and  blinds  him  to  what  is  superlatively 
good  in  this  work-ridden,  life-wasting  United  States. 
It  seems  to  him  that  the  huddled  villas  of  Newport 
and  the  crowding  booths  of  Coney  Island  must  com- 
pletely measure  our  civilization.  He  sees  every- 
where among  us  so  much  beauty  and  so  little  real 
pleasure  in  the  beautiful,  so  much  spending  and  so 
little  true  value  gained,  so  much  boasting  of  freedom 
and  such  slaverj'^  to  false  and  ridiculous  conventions. 
But  the  traveler  who,  noting  these  surface  defici- 
encies, calls  us  savages,  is  wholly  wrong.  We  possess 
all  the  elements  of  refinement  excepting  only  that 
one  which  has  been  our  leading  boast, — simplicity. 
In  escaping  from  the  old  New  England  conscience 
we  have  for  a  time  run  away  from  the  fundamental 
principles  of  social  duty ;  in  entering  into  the  liberty 
of  genuine  civilization  we  have  become  entangled 
temporarily  in  the  meshes  of  cosmopolitan  license. 
It  is  wholesome,  therefore,  occasionally  to  go  back 
and  to  seek,  by  study  of  men  and  events,  the  deep- 
lying  moral  causes  of  the  unquestioned  power  and 
leadership  of  this  small  Northeastern  corner  of  the 
United  States. 

The  essential   power  of   New   England,   and   of 


1 8  New  England  Conscience 


New  Englanders,  has  always  been  the  force  of  rug- 
ged simplicity.  The  men  who  won  the  Revolu- 
tionary War,  the  men  who  saved  the  Union,  were 
above  all  simple  men,  doing  their  work  in  a  straight- 
forward way.  The  spiritual  and  literary  leaders 
of  New  England,  no  less,  were  men  and  women  of 
direct  speech  and  unartificial  living. 

The  new  New  England  Conscience,  if  it  is  to  do 
great  deeds,  must  meet  the  complex  problems 
of  the  twentieth  with  the  single-heartedness  of  the 
eighteenth  century;  must  choose  as  its  leaders,  such 
direct,  straightforward  men  as  those  who  won  the 
Revolutionary  War  and  who  saved  the  Union  to 
which  that  War  gave  birth.  Therefore  it  seems 
worth  while  to  take  up,  even  though  in  a  desultory 
way,  a  few  of  the  events,  and  to  examine  a  few  of 
the  men  in  which  and  in  whom  the  New  England 
spirit  and  the  New  England  conscience  seem 
to  have  played  a  leading  and  compelling  part. 
Behind  the  New  England  spirit  is,  however, 
the  eternal  spirit  due  to  the  feminine  prin- 
ciple; and,  if  it  seems  a  long  way  from  New  Eng- 
land to  Versailles,  the  space  is  only  that  of  geo- 
graphy. Temperamentally  and  in  matters  of  con- 
science, Mme.  de  Maintenon  was  conspicuously  of 
the  New  England  type. 


Samuel  Adams:    New  England  Democrat    19 

II 

Samuel  Adams:  The  New  England  Democrat 

WE  very  properly  call  Washington  the 
Father  of  his  Country;  but  the  real 
Founder  of  these  United  States  was 
not  Washington — it  was  Samuel 
Adams.  It  is  doubtful  if  we  could 
have  won  in  the  Revolutionary  War  without  the 
lofty  courage  and  wise  generalship  of  Washington ; 
it  is  doubtful  if  the  United  States  could  have  weath- 
ered the  still  harder  period  following  the  Revolu- 
tion had  it  not  been  for  the  strength  and  wisdom 
of  the  first  President.  But  it  is  also  doubtful  if  we 
would  have  had  a  Revolutionary  War  at  all —  and 
therefore  a  field  for  Washington's  great  qualities — 
had  it  not  been  for  the  tireless  efforts  and  the 
extraordinary  skill  and  power  of  Samuel  Adams, 
who,  John  Fiske  says,  should  stand  second  only  to 
Washington  as  the  greatest  of  Americans.  Boston 
led  the  movement  against  the  arbitrary  rule  of 
Great  Britain ;  but  it  was  Sam  Adams  who  led 
Boston.  Boston  stirred  up  Massachusetts  and  the 
other  colonies  to  resist  taxation ;  but  it  was  Sam 
Adams  who  stirred  up  Boston.  And  he  did  this 
not  by  eloquence  and  fiery  speech-making — for  he 
was  no  orator;  he  stirred  up  Boston,  he  stirred  up 
Massachusetts,  he  stirred  up  all  the  colonies  by 
letters  to  the  newspapers,  by  correspondence,  vo- 
luminous and  fiery,  most  of  all  by  resolutions  passed 


20  New  England  Conscience 


in  that  greatest  political  institution  which  America 
ever  possessed  or  ever  will  possess, — the  New  Eng- 
land town-meeting. 

It  is  superfluous  to  describe  the  principles  and 
methods  of  the  town-meeting;  but  perhaps  we  do 
not  always  remember  what  a  perfect  instrument  for 
the  teaching  and  preservation  of  democracy  that 
town-meeting  has  been  and  still  is,  and  how  much 
the  city  youth  and  man  loses  in  not  having  an  op- 
portunity to  watch  the  machinery  of  government, 
to  debate  public  questions  and  to  interrogate,  face 
to  face,  the  officials  under  whose  rule  he  lives.  I 
have  no  hesitation  in  saying  that  the  moulders  of 
America  have  been,  not  its  Presidents,  Governors 
and  other  great  dignitaries,  but  those  humble  though 
powerful  offi,bials  called  Moderators,  who  are  sworn 
to  show  no  favor  in  conducting  the  town-meeting, 
and  who  must  let  the  meanest  and  poorest  citizen 
express  his  views  as  freely  and  lengthily  as  he 
chooses,  provided  only  he  keeps  within  hailing  dis- 
tance of  the  question  before  the  house. 

One  hundred  and  fifty  years  ago,  however,  the 
towns  in  Massachusetts  were  even  more  democratic 
than  they  are  today;  for  the  people  of  that  time  not 
only  settled,  in  their  town-meetings,  such  questions 
as  they  do  at  present;  they  also  decided  who  should 
be  the  minister  and  how  much  (or,  rather,  how  lit- 
tle) salary  he  should  be  paid.  As  a  consequence, 
the  citizens  grew  into  the  habit  of  discussing  all 
kinds  of  questions  about  church  government,  morals, 
and  religion,  and  were  accustomed,  therefore,  to 
look  at  every  civic  and  political  problem  from  its  eth- 


SaiMujiL  Adams 


Samuel  Adams:    New  England  Democrat    21 


icaJ  SIS  well  as  from  its  material  side.  But  there  was 
still  another  function  exercised  by  those  old  town- 
meetings  which  has  long  since  passed  into  oblivion, 
— that  of  taking  direct  part  in  the  work  of  the  Gen- 
eral Court.  For  in  those  earlier  days  the  legislature 
was  regarded  by  the  towns  of  Massachusetts  simply 
as  a  sort  of  joint  town-meeting,  and  the  representa- 
tives sent  to  the  General  Court  were  instructed,  by 
formal  resolutions  of  the  town,  how  they  should 
vote  on  all  important  questions. 

These  facts  are  essential  to  an  understanding  of 
the  action  of  the  colonies  in  the  ten  or  twelve  years 
before  the  Battle  of  Lexington:  the  facts  that  the 
people  at  that  time  had  been  educated  by  one  hun- 
dred and  twenty-five  years  of  town-meetings  to 
manage  their  own  affairs  through  the  most  perfect 
form  of  democratic  government  ever  devised ;  that 
those  colonial  meetings  were  practically  free  from  all 
supervision  by  the  British  government ;  that  those 
town  gatherings  considered  not  only  the  affairs  of 
daily  life,  but  also  great  moral  questions;  and  that 
they  took  an  active  part  in  the  business  of  the  whole 
commonwealth  by  instructing  their  representatives 
to  the  General  Court  how  to  vote  upon  every  large 
measure  affecting  the  whole  colony. 

I  have  said  that  the  towns  of  Massachusetts  were 
perfect  democracies;  but  I  should  have  excepted 
Boston.  There  was  a  world  of  difference  between 
the  town  governments  of  Massachusetts  and  the 
superimposed  colonial  rule;  and  Boston,  as  the  seat 
of  his  Majesty's  government  for  Massachusetts,  was 
filled  with  crown  officers,  with  military  men,  with 


22  ^ew  England  Conscience 


rich  merchants  having  intimate  relations  with  the 
mother-country,  and  with  younger  sons  of  the  no- 
bility sent  over  here  to  make  a  living.  So  in  Bos- 
ton there  was  a  large  and  very  powerful  aristocracy 
wholly  in  sympathy  with  British  rule;  and  the  con- 
test there  in  the  eleven  years,  1764  to  1775,  was  not 
only  one  between  the  colonists  and  the  mother-coun- 
try, but  a  contest  between  Democracy  as  represented 
by  the  Town  Meeting,  and  Aristocracy  as  repre- 
sented by  most  of  the  wealthy  merchants  and  con- 
spicuous officials. 

The  Boston  of  that  day  did  not  rest  mainly  upon 
piles;  it  was  a  narrow,  but  solid,  peninsula  extend- 
ing into  the  harbor,  and  it  possessed  no  houses 
higher  than  three  stories.  Therefore  the  few  public 
buildings,  such  as  Faneuil  Hall,  the  Old  State 
House  and  the  Old  South  Meeting  House,  loomed 
up  as  prominent  objects  visible  from  everywhere. 
Metaphorically,  too,  those  three  buildings  stand 
forth  as  great  landmarks  in  American  history,  for 
in  one  or  the  other  of  them  took  place  almost  all 
the  famous  scenes  of  the  opening  of  the  Revolution- 
ary War. 

In  one  end  of  the  Old  State  House  met  the  Pro- 
vincial Assembly,  or  General  Court,  and  at  the  other 
end  met  the  Governor  and  his  Council;  in  Faneuil 
Hall  assembled  the  ordinary  town-meetings  of  Bos- 
ton; but  when  there  was  any  particularly  exciting 
meeting — and  there  were  many  in  those  ten  years 
before  1775 — Faneuil  Hall  was  not  big  enough;  so 
they  would  adjourn  to  the  Old  South  Meeting 
House,  and  the  thousands  of  overwrought  towns- 


Samuel  Adams:    New  England  Democrat    23 

people  would  come  sweeping  up  through  what  are 
now  Adams  Square  and  Washington  Street,  and 
would  surge  into  that  building,  until  every  corner 
upon  the  floor  and  in  the  galleries  was  filled. 

In  this  old  town  where  everybody  knew  every- 
body else,  and  in  those  lively  old  town-meetings 
where  everybody  felt  free  to  speak  his  mind,  Sam- 
uel Adams  played  his  great  part  as  the  stirrer-up 
and  leader  of  the  Revolution. 

Samuel  Adams  was  not  born  a  poor  boy,  though 
he  was  always  a  poor  man.  His  father  was  one  of 
the  leading  citizens  of  Boston,  and  his  grandfather 
was  brother  to  the  grandfather  of  John  Adams. 
Samuel  was  born  in  1722  in  a  good  house  on  Pur- 
chase Street,  with  a  beautiful  garden  stretching 
down  to  the  harbor,  and  having  a  fine  view  of 
Massachusetts  Bay.  The  boy  went  to  Harvard, 
was  graduated  when  he  was  eighteen,  and  wanted 
to  study  law ;  but  law  not  being  considered  a  very 
respectable  occupation  in  those  days,  his  parents 
forbade  it  and  tried  to  turn  a  man  who  would  have 
been  a  wonderfully  good  advocate  into  what  proved 
to  be  a  very  unsuccessful  merchant.  The  young 
man  had  no  taste  for  this,  kept  losing  money  and 
losing  more  money  until,  finally,  with  the  little  that 
was  left,  he  and  his  father  set  up  a  malt  house  in 
their  garden  on  Purchase  Street.  This  was  fairly 
successful  for  a  while ;  but  this  was  not  considered 
very  respectable  either;  and  in  later  years  Adams' 
enemies  took  great  pleasure  in  calling  him  "Sam  the 
Maltster." 

Probably  the  main   reason   why   the  Adamses — 


24  New  England  Conscience 


father  and  son — did  not  succeed  better  In  a  material 
way  was  because  they  were  far  more  interested  in 
town  affairs  than  in  their  own  concerns.  We  find 
Samuel  Adams  serving  on  many  town  committees 
and  as  moderator  of  town-meetings  for  a  number 
of  years;  but,  singularly  enough,  he  did  not  become 
really  prominent  until  he  was  forty-two.  In  those 
days  a  man  of  that  age  was  considered  venerable, 
and  Adams,  moreover,  carried  out  that  view,  for  his 
hair  was  quite  grey  and  he  had  a  trembling  of  the 
head  and  hands  which,  while  it  added  impressive- 
ness  to  his  public  speaking,  made  him  seem  much 
older  than  he  was.  He  had  been  contributing  letters 
to  the  newspapers  for  a  number  of  years — the  kind 
of  letter  signed  Veritas,  Senex,  etc.,  which  made  up 
the  greater  substance  of  those  pre-Revolutionary 
journals — but  his  first  writing  of  consequence  was 
a  document  prepared  for  a  town-meeting,  a  docu- 
ment which  was  adopted,  protesting  against  the  pro- 
posed Stamp  Act.  This  paper  is  important  in  be- 
ing the  first  formal  statement  ever  made  by  the  Col- 
onies that  Parliament  had  no  right  to  tax  them, 
and  in  containing  the  very  first  suggestion  that  the 
Colonies  get  together  to  secure  redress. 

In  the  fall  of  that  year,  1764,  he  was  elected 
a  member  of  the  Provincial  Assembly  or  General 
Court,  and  almost  immediately  he — together  with 
James  Otis — became  the  leader  in  those  stirring 
times.  In  the  following  May  (1765)  Adams  was 
re-elected  to  the  General  Court,  the  other  three 
members  from  Boston  being  Thomas  Cushing  (long- 
time  Speaker  of   the   House),   John   Hancock   and 


Samuel  Adams:    New  England  Democrat    2$ 


James  Otis.  At  this  session  Adams  was  elected 
Clerk  of  the  House,  and  the  annual  salary  of  one 
hundred  pounds  was  about  all  that  he  and  his  family 
had  to  live  on  for  a  number  of  years. 

Meanwhile  the  Stamp  Act  had  been  repealed ; 
but  the  British  government,  pretending  to  believe 
that  it  was  the  kind  of  tax,  not  the  fact  of  being 
taxed,  that  the  colonies  objected  to,  proposed  to 
put  other  taxes  upon  paper,  glass,  painters'  colors 
and  tea.  Worse  than  that,  however,  they  proposed 
to  use  the  money  from  these  taxes  for  giving  regular 
salaries  to  the  governors,  judges,  and  other  officers 
appointed  by  the  King,  who,  theretofore,  had  been 
dependent  upon  the  votes  of  the  Provincial  As- 
semblies. This  the  colonies  did  not  like  at  all, 
and  every  manner  of  wild  suggestion  was  advanced. 
A  sensible  plan  of  resistance,  however,  and  one  that 
met  with  popular  favor,  was  made  by  Samuel  Adams 
that  the  colonies  should  stop  importing  English  goods 
and  should  establish  manufactures  of  their  own. 
At  his  suggestion  town-meetings  were  held  through- 
out Massachusetts  to  arouse  the  people  against  us- 
ing British  goods  and  to  encourage  the  starting  of 
domestic  industries. 

The  Massachusetts  Assembly  prepared  various 
documents,  most  of  which  Sam  Adams  wrote,  in 
relation  to  these  taxes.  Among  them  was  a  petition 
to  the  King;  and  when  Mr.  Adams  had  finished 
writing  it,  his  daughter  said,  "In  a  few  weeks  that 
paper  will  be  touched  by  the  royal  hand."  "More 
likely,"  replied  her  father,  "it  will  be  spurned  by 
the  royal  foot."     The  document  which  made  the 


26  New  England  Conscience 


most  stir,  however,  was  a  so-called  "Circular  Let- 
ter" sent  by  the  Massachusetts  Assembly  to  the 
other  colonies,  urging  them  to  work  together  to 
devise  some  means  of  making  the  mother  country 
listen  to  their  complaints  and  grievances.  This  Cir- 
cular Letter  so  angered  the  King  and  his  ministers 
that  they  ordered  Governor  Bernard  to  dissolve  the 
General  Court  and  not  to  let  it  meet  again  until  it 
should  agree  to  withdraw  the  obnoxious  letter.  Not 
only  did  the  General  Court,  before  dissolving,  vote 
not  to  withdraw  the  letter,  but  town  meetings  were 
everywhere  held  upholding  the  members  and  making 
ver>'  vigorous  protest  against  taxation  without  rep- 
resentation. The  King's  government,  therefore,  de- 
termined to  break  the  spirit  of  the  colonies  by  for- 
bidding town-meetings,  by  having  such  leaders  as 
Adams  and  Otis  arrested,  and  by  sending  troops  to 
overawe  the  people.  When  the  mother  country  took 
such  violent  action  as  this,  Adams  foresaw  that  rec- 
onciliation would  be  impossible,  and  from  that  mo- 
ment, he  afterwards  said,  he  began  to  work  night 
and  day  for  the  absolute  independence  of  America. 
Since  the  General  Court  would  not  rescind  the 
Circular  Letter,  since  it  could  not  meet  again  until 
it  did,  and  since  it  was  important  for  the  towns  to 
confer,  the  Boston  Town  Meeting,  at  Adams'  sug- 
gestion, got  around  the  difficulty  by  calling  a  con- 
ference, in  Boston,  of  town  representatives.  To 
this  invitation  ninety-six  towns  responded ;  and  while 
they  did  not  accomplish  much,  they  found  out  how 
easy  it  was  to  get  together;  and  the  time  was  rapid- 
ly  approaching   when    they   would   need   to   act   in 


Samuel  Adams:    New  England  Democrat    27 


unity.  For  on  the  very  day  (in  October,  1768) 
that  this  convention  adjourned,  two  regiments  (the 
14th  and  29th)  arrived  in  Boston  for  the  purpose 
of  frightening  the  rebellious  inhabitants  into  good 
behavior. 

The  year  1769  was  devoted  by  most  of  the  peo- 
ple of  Boston  to  abusing  equally  the  importers  of 
English  goods  and  these  imported  English  soldiers. 
Both  were  hooted  at  and  called  all  manner  of  evil 
names  continually,  and  the  town  government  and 
the  Governor  were  in  a  ceaseless  quarrel  over  quar- 
ters for  the  troops.  The  town  said  that  the  soldiers 
should  be  kept  down  at  the  Castle  (where  Fort  In- 
dependence now  stands),  but  the  Governor  de- 
clared that  for  the  protection  of  himself  and  the  oth- 
er Crown  officers  they  should  be  kept  on  duty  in 
the  very  midst  of  the  town  ;  so  the  streets  and  the 
Common  resounded  with  drums  and  marching,  and 
the  main  guard  was  posted  on  King  (now  State) 
Street,  with  guns  pointed  at  the  Assembly  chamber. 
Considering  the  way  they  were  abused  by  the 
tongues  of  the  townspeople,  the  soldiers  behaved 
pretty  well;  and,  of  course,  the  longer  they  refrained 
from  using  force,  the  more  abusive  the  populace  be- 
came. Therefore  it  is  a  matter  for  wonder  that  not 
until  they  had  been  in  Boston  a  year  and  a  half  did 
a  real  clash  between  the  "lobster  backs"  and  the 
citizens  take  place.  That  clash,  needless  to  say,  was 
the  Boston  Massacre,  in  which  three  citizens  were 
killed  and  one  mortally  wounded. 

That  affray  took  place  in  the  evenmg.  Early 
next  morning  the  citizens,   wild   with   indignation. 


New  England  Conscience 


assembled  at  Faneuil  Hall  in  town  meeting  and  ap- 
pointed a  committee  of  fifteen,  with  Hancock  as 
chairman,  to  interview  the  Governor  and  tell  him 
that  the  regiments  must  be  sent  away.  The  meet- 
ing then  adjourned  till  three  o'clock  in  the  after- 
noon, while  the  committee  should  wait  upon  Gov- 
ernor Hutchinson.  He  told  them,  as  he  had  re- 
peatedly said  before,  that  he  had  no  power  to  order 
the  removal  of  the  troops.  The  committee  was  so 
determined,  however,  and  the  crowds  in  the  streets 
were  so  threatening,  that  Hutchinson  at  last  agreed 
to  remove  the  29th  regiment,  which  had  been  con- 
cerned in  the  Massacre,  to  the  Castle  in  the  harbor. 
He  absolutely  refused,  however,  to  order  away  the 
14th. 

Meanwhile  the  town-meeting  had  again  assem- 
bled, and  the  people,  pouring  in  from  the  surround- 
ing towns  at  the  news  of  the  Massacre,  had  so 
swelled  the  numbers  that  Faneuil  Hall  would  not 
hold  half  the  crowd.  So  the  meeting  was  adjourned 
to  the  Old  South  Meeting  House.  Imagine  the 
streets  between  that  building  and  Faneuil  Hall 
filled  with  a  tremendously  excited  crowd  and  hear 
the  cry:  "Make  way  for  the  Committee  of  Fifteen," 
as  that  committee,  with  Hancock  and  Adams  at 
their  head,  emerge  from  the  Old  State  House,  with 
the  Governor's  answer,  and  squeeze  their  way 
towards  the  waiting  town-meeting.  As  the  Com- 
mittee pass  through  the  human  lane  which  is  made 
for  them,  Adams  leans  from  one  side  to  the  other 
repeating,  in  a  stage  whisper,  "Both  regiments  or 
none,"  "Both  regiments  or  none."     Arrived  at  the 


Samuel  Adams:    New  England  Democrat    29 


Old  South,  the  report  is  made  that  the  Governor 
U'ill  remove  the  29th  but  will  not  remove  the  14th 
regiment.  Then  the  people,  understanding  what 
Adams  meant,  give  a  great  shout:  "Both  regiments 
or  none;"  and  the  meeting  votes  tumultuously  that  a 
committee  of  seven  should  go  back  to  the  Govern- 
or with  this  ultimatum  of  the  Town.  Day  had 
begun  to  wane  and  in  the  dim  firelight  of  the  Coun- 
ril  Chamber  sat  the  Governor  and  his  advisers,  to- 
gether with  Colonel  Dalrymple,  the  commander  of 
the  troops,  waiting  for  the  people's  message,  and 
in  the  high,  gloomy  church  sat  the  people,  waiting 
for  the  Governor's  reply. 

It  was  a  great  moment  in  Samuel  Adams'  life 
when  he  strode  into  the  Council  Chamber  ready  to 
tell  Governor  Hutchinson  that  the  will  of  the  people 
must  over-ride  the  orders  of  the  King.  You  ioiow 
that  picture  of  him  in  Faneuil  Hall, — that  picture 
painted  by  Copley,  which  represents  Adams  at  this 
moment  standing  with  his  head  thrown  back,  de- 
termination on  ever}'  line  of  his  face,  his  right 
hand  crushing  a  roll  of  manuscript  and  his  left  hand 
outstretched,  pointing  to  the  Massachusetts  Charter. 
And  these  are  some  of  the  words  that  he  boldly  said, 
knowing  that  every  word  meant  rebellion,  and  re- 
bellion, hanging: 

"If  you,  or  Colonel  Dalrymple  under  you,  have 
the  power  to  remove  one  regiment,  you  have  the 
power  to  remove  both  ;  and  nothing  short  of  their 
total  removal  will  satisfy  the  people  or  preserve  the 
peace  of  the  Province.  A  multitude  highly  incensed 
now  wait  the  result  of  this  application.     The  voice 


30  New  England  Conscience 


of  ten  thousand  freemen  demands  that  both  regi- 
ments be  forthwith  removed.  Their  voice  must  be  re- 
spected, their  demand  obeyed.  Fail  not  then  at  your 
peril  to  comply  with  this  requisition.  On  you  alone 
rests  the  responsibility  of  this  decision ;  and  if  the 
just  expectations  of  the  people  are  disappointed, 
you  must  be  answerable  to  God  and  your  country 
for  the  fatal  consequences  that  must  ensue." 

A  long  discussion  followed;  and  finally  Hutchin- 
son, urged  by  his  counsellors  and  even  by  Dalrymple. 
gave  in,  and  the  message  was  brought  back  to  the 
waiting  people  that  democracy  had  won.  Within 
a  week  both  regiments  were  removed  to  the  Castle ; 
and  always  afterwards  they  were  called  the  "Sam 
Adams  Regiments." 

Adams  and  Democracy  had  for  the  moment  tri- 
umphed, but  the  next  two  years  were  years  of  reac- 
tion. Times  grew  hard  and  harder,  New  York, 
^vhich  had  agreed  to  the  non-importation  of  British 
goods,  went  back  on  this  agreement  and  so  broke 
the  force  of  the  whole  plan,  the  King's  government 
grew  more  and  more  determined,  the  Whigs  of  Bos- 
ton more  and  more  discouraged,  and  the  Tories, 
consequently,  more  and  more  confident.  In  this 
crisis  Adams  saw  that  the  only  way  to  strengthen 
the  cause  of  independence  would  be  to  bring  the 
force  of  all  the  Massachusetts  town-meetings  to  bear 
upon  the  somewhat  wavering  policies  of  the  Boston 
Town  Meeting.  Therefore,  in  the  fall  of  1772,  he 
moved,  in  the  Boston  meeting,  that  "A  committee 
of  Correspondence  be  appointed,  to  consist  of  twen- 
ty-one persons,  to  state  the  rights  of  the  colonists. 


Samuel  Adams:    Neiv  England  Democrat    31 


and  of  this  Province  in  particular,  as  men  and 
Christians  and  as  subjects;  and  to  communicate  and 
publish  the  same  to  the  several  towns  and  to  the 
world,"  etc.  Most  of  his  friends  thought  this  plan 
rather  absurd  and  many  of  them  refused  to  serve 
on  the  Committee ;  but  the  response  w^hich  came 
from  the  towns  soon  showed  Adams  to  have  been 
right.  These  Committees,  we  now  know,  were  the 
very  mainsprings  of  the  Federal  Union.  It  is  in- 
spiring to  read  the  bold  words  which  came  in  to  the 
Boston  meeting,  during  the  winter  of  1 772-1 773 
from  these  towns.  Said  the  people  of  Roxbury: 
"Our  pious  fathers  died  with  the  pleasing  hope  that 
we,  their  children,  should  live  free.  Let  none,  as 
they  will  answer  it  another  day,  disturb  the  ashes 
of  those  heroes  by  selling  their  birthright."  Ipswich 
advised  that  the  "inhabitants  should  stand  firm  as 
one  man  to  support  and  maintain  all  their  just  rights 
and  privileges."  Salisbury,  Beverly,  Lynn,  Dan- 
\  ers  and  Rowley  declared  for  an  American  Union ; 
and  in  Plymouth  the  vote  showed  that  there  were 
ninety  to  one  ready,  if  need  be,  to  fight  Great 
Britain. 

This  action  of  Massachusetts  spread  to  the  other 
colonies,  and  in  1773  Virginia  proposed  that  there 
be  Committees  of  Correspondence  between  all  the 
colonies.  Later  we  shall  see  how  Massachusetts 
responded  to  this  suggestion ;  but  meanwhile  oc- 
curred an  event  that  brought  the  colonies  still  closer 
together  in  their  opposition  to  increasing  tyranny. 
As  a  result  of  the  non-importation  agreements,  the 
new  taxes  had  yielded  practically  no  revenue  to  the 


32  1^ ew  England  Conscience 


Crown  ;  therefore  they  were  now  all  taken  off  ex- 
cepting the  tax  on  tea,  which  was  left  in  order  to 
show  that  the  King  reserved  the  right  to  tax.  It 
is  needless  to  go  into  the  long  controversy  over 
this  new  taxation  question,  or  to  rehearse  the  self- 
sacrifice  of  the  American  women  in  giving  up  their 
favorite  beverage,  drinking  catnip  tea  instead.  It 
is  well  known  how  the  shiploads  of  the  proscribed 
herb  were  consigned  to  certain  agents  here,  how  those 
agents  refused  to  resign,  how  the  Boston  Town 
Meeting  tried  to  induce  Hutchinson  to  send  the  tea 
back,  and  how  he  would  not.  After  the  arrival  of 
the  first  tea-ship,  the  Dartmouth,  on  November  17, 
1773.  town-meetings  were  held  almost  daily, — most 
of  them  in  the  Old  South  Meeting-house, — resolu- 
tions that  the  tea  never  should  be  landed  were  pass- 
ed, the  ship  was  constantly  guarded  by  armed 
citizens,  and  mounted  couriers  stood  ready  to  alarm 
the  country  should  the  tea  be  brought  on  shore. 
At  last  came  the  day  when,  by  law,  the  tea  must  be 
landed  by  the  customs  officers.  The  owners  were 
ready  to  send  the  cargoes  back ;  but  the  customs  of- 
ficers would  not  give  them  permission,  and  two 
armed  vessels  were  stationed  in  the  channel  with 
orders  to  sink  the  ships  should  they  try  to  leave 
without  their  clearance  papers.  This  was  the  i6th 
of  December.  Couriers  had  gone  all  over  the  prov- 
ince with  the  news;  people  from  the  whole  eastern 
part  of  Massachusetts  had  poured  in  to  see  what 
was  going  to  happen ;  and  a  town-meeting  duly  call- 
ed was  attended  by  seven  thousand  persons  who 
filled    the    Old    South    Meeting-house    and    spread 


Samuel  Adams:    Netr  England  Democrat    H 


through  the  surrounding  streets.  This  assemblage 
gave  the  owner  of  the  tea-vessel  one  more  chance ; 
so,  in  obedience  to  its  orders,  the  much-abused  man 
traveled  way  out  to  Hutchinson's  country  house 
on  Milton  Hill  to  beg  once  again  for  a  permit  to 
send  his  cargo  back.  Meanwhile  the  great  crowd 
sat  till  long  after  dark,  with  Sam  Adams  as  mod- 
erator, debating  and  discussing.  Evidently  some- 
thing was  going  to  happen ;  but  only  the  few  in 
the  secret  knew  just  what.  After  a  long  time  poor 
old  Mr.  Rotch  came  back  from  Milton  and  report- 
ed that  the  Governor  had  again  refused  him  a 
pcrn)it.  Immediately  Mr.  Adams  arose  and  in  a 
loud  and  solemn  voice  said:  "This  meeting  can 
do  nothing  more  to  save  the  country."  That  was 
the  prearranged  signal.  Instantly  a  loud  war- 
whoop  was  heard  and  forty  or  fifty  men  disguised 
as  Indians  rushed  by  the  door,  down  Milk  and 
Purchase  Streets  to  Griffin's  Wharf  off  which  the 
tea  ships  were  moored.  The  crowd  rushed  after 
.them  and  such  a  tumult  and  howling  quiet  Boston 
had  not  heard  for  many  a  day.  The  imitation  In- 
dians were  quiet  enough,  however,  when  they  got 
on  board  the  ship,  and  in  a  short  time  they  liad  hoist- 
ed every  chest  of  tea,  broken  it  open  and  dumped  the 
contents  into  the  sea.  This  last  desperate  measure 
had  been  planned  under  the  direction  of  Adams 
in  a  printing  oflice  on  Court  Street  which  was  long 
a  favorite  meeting-place  of  the  patriot  leaders. 

The  King's  answer  to  the  Boston  Tea  Party  was 
the  Boston  Port  Bill.  The  English  ministry  thought 
this  a  very  shrewd  move;  for,  by  closing  the  port  of 


34  New  England  Conscience 


Boston  to  all  entering  and  outgoing  ships,  the  occu- 
pation of  most  of  the  people  would  be  gone,  and  it 
was  hoped  that  they  would  be  starved  into  submis- 
sion. Furthermore,  by  diverting  trade  from  Boston, 
other  towns  and  colonies  would  benefit  and  would 
make  so  much  profit  that,  it  was  thought,  they  would 
be  quite  willing  to  desert  rebellious  Boston.  But  in 
this  they  were  completely  mistaken.  Although,  to 
get  back  her  trade,  all  the  Boston  Town  Meeting 
had  to  do  was  to  vote  payment  for  the  destroyed  tea, 
they  would  not  pass  such  a  vote;  the  towns  which 
might  have  profited  by  Boston's  misfortune  refused 
to  do  so;  money,  provisions,  and  votes  of  praise  and 
encouragement  came  in  from  all  over  the  colonies; 
and  the  demand  for  a  congress  of  all  the  colonies 
grew  louder  and  louder. 

In  the  interval,  the  Governor,  practically  power- 
less against  the  obstinacy  of  the  Boston  Town  Meet- 
ing, had  asked  for  leave  of  absence  and  had  gone 
over  to  England,  General  Gage  being  appointed 
Governor  in  his  place.  As  Boston  was  in  disgrace, 
Gage  forbade  the  General  Court  to  meet  there  and 
ordered  it  to  Salem,  where  it  convened  in  June, 
1774.  Its  chief  business  was  to  appoint  delegates  to 
the  proposed  Continental  Congress  at  Philadelphia; 
but  this  was  kept  a  profound  secret ;  for,  had  it  been 
known.  Gage  would  have  dissolved  the  Assembly  be- 
fore it  had  a  chance  to  carry  out  this  plan.  Sam 
Adams,  however,  was  equal  to  the  emergency.  Keep- 
ing the  General  Court  busy  with  matters  of  not 
much  consequence,  and  having  it  debate  resolutions 
which  looked  as  if  Massachusetts  were  getting  ready 


Samuel  Adams:    New  England  Democrat    35 


to  yield  to  the  King,  he  lulled  suspicion  to  sleep  and 
meanwhile  went  about  among  the  members,  secret- 
ly pledging  them  to  support  him  in  what  he  pro- 
posed to  do.  At  first  he  could  be  sure  of  only  five 
members;  but  by  the  17th  of  June  (just  a  year  be- 
fore the  Battle  of  Bunker  Hill)  he  was  certain  of 
a  majority.  So,  as  head  of  a  committee  on  the  state 
of  the  Province,  he  suddenly  brought  in  a  resolve 
that  five  men  whom  he  named  should  be  appointed 
delegates  to  a  colonial  congress  to  be  held  at  Phila- 
delphia. The  Tory  members  tried  to  choke  off  the 
measure  and  break  up  the  session  by  leaving  the 
hall ;  but  Adams  had  had  the  doors  locked  and  had 
pocketed  the  key.  One  member,  however,  did  es- 
cape and  carried  the  news  of  what  was  going  on 
to  Gage,  who  immediately  sent  his  personal  agent 
to  dissolve  the  Assembly.  But  the  Assembly  re- 
fused to  let  the  Governor's  messenger  in  until  they 
had  passed  a  vote  appointing  the  delegates,  ap- 
propriated money  for  their  expenses  and  adopted 
various  other  measures  against  the  government. 

We  have  no  time  to  take  up  the  extraordinary 
history  of  those  Continental  Congresses  which 
finally  produced  the  Declaration  of  Independence, 
and  in  which  Samuel  and  John  Adams  and  John 
Hancock  played  so  conspicuous  a  part.  But  I  would 
speak  of  still  two  more  town  meetings  which  took 
place  in  the  Old  South  Meeting  house.  The  first 
was  in  June,  1774.  Boston's  trade  was  dead,  her 
ships  and  wharves  were  rotting,  grass  was  growing 
in  her  streets,  men  who  had  been  rich  were  living 
on  the  charity  of  other  towns,  obstinacy  seemed  to 


36  New  England  Conscience 


have  resulted  in  nothing,  and  a  simple  confession 
that  the  Tea  Party  had  been  wrong  would  restore 
her  trade  and  industry.  The  Tories,  therefore, 
thought  this  the  right  time  to  call  a  town  meeting 
at  which  to  dissolve  the  Committee  of  Correspon- 
dence and  to  beg  forgiveness  of  the  mother  country. 
Thousands  came  to  the  meeting — they  had  nothing 
else  to  do; — gloom  was  on  every  face,  fear  of  the 
future  in  every  heart,  continued  resistance  meant 
starvation  and  ruin ;  but  Samuel  Adams,  leaving 
the  chair  as  Moderator,  led  the  debate  for  hours, 
and  when  the  vote  was  finally  taken,  the  townspeo- 
ple, by  a  great  majority,  declared  themselves  deter- 
mined to  continue  to  resist.  Moreover,  they  en- 
tered into  a  "solemn  league  and  covenant"  to  use 
no  British  goods  whatever  until  their  wrongs  should 
be  righted.  That  was  the  crucial  moment  in  Sam 
Adams'  long  fight  for  the  independence  of  the  col- 
onies; that  vote  of  the  Boston  Town  Meeting 
meant  ultimate  war. 

The  second  meeting  was,  like  the  first,  illegal — 
for  town  meetings  had  been  long  ago  forbidden — 
and  was  held  on  the  6th  of  March  (the  5th 
being  Sunday),  1775,  the  fifth  anniversary  of  the 
Boston  Massacre.  The  town  was  then  wholly  in 
the  hands  of  soldiery — there  being  eleven  regiments 
stationed  there — a  price  was  on  the  heads  of  Adams, 
Hancock,  Otis,  Warren  and  the  other  patriot  lead- 
ers, any  clash  between  the  military  and  the  people 
meant  riot,  massacre  and  the  hanging  of  those  pa- 
triot leaders: — yet  on  the  Old  South  platform, 
behind  a  desk  draped   in  mourning,  calmly  sat,  as 


Samuel  Adams:    New  England  Democrat    37 


Moderator  of  the  meeting,  Samuel  Adams;  and 
packed  into  every  available  inch  of  the  room  sat 
and  stood  the  people,  waiting  for  Joseph  Warren, 
the  orator,  to  appear.  Scattered  through  the  audi- 
ence, to  intimidate  it,  were  many  soldiers  in  uni- 
form and  armed.  Observing  them,  Adams  asked 
the  townspeople  to  vacate  the  front  rows  and  in- 
vited the  soldiers  to  occupy  those  pews  so  that 
they  might  the  better  hear  what  Dr.  Warren  was 
about  to  say.  A  full  hour  beyond  the  appointed 
time  that  tense  audience  awaited  Warren ;  and  then 
he  came  in,  not  through  the  door,  but  through  a 
window  behind  the  pulpit,  the  crowd  being  so  dense 
that  he  could  find  no  other  ingress.  Warren  was 
as  eloquent  as  he  was  fearless,  and  every  word  he 
spoke  was  an  invitation  to  the  soldiers  to  cry  treason 
and  arrest  him  and  the  applauding  audience.  In- 
deed, one  officer  sitting  on  the  pulpit  stairs,  held 
up  his  open  pahn  filled  with  bullets  where  all  the 
audience  could  see.  Warren,  without  a  moment's 
hesitation,  dropped  his  handkerchief  over  the  bul- 
lets and  went  steadily  on.  What  a  scene  that  was ; 
and  how  that  and  like  scenes  of  this  great  time  have 
made  that  old  South  Meeting-House  a  sacred  place 
forever ! 

I  have  spoken  tlius  far  mainly  of  Boston,  for  that 
was  the  headquarters  of  rebellion;  but,  each  in  its 
own  way,  every  other  tow^n  in  Massachusetts  was 
equally  active.  Take  my  own  town  of  Lexington, 
for  example.  It  had  but  seven  hundred  inhabitants, 
almost  all  of  them  plain  farmers,  many  of  them 
scarcely  able  to  read  or  to  write  their  names ;    but 


38  New  England  Conscience 

they  knew  history,  they  understood  politics,  they 
had  been  educated  by  a  century  of  town  meetings 
to  know  their  rights  and  to  speak  their  minds. 
There  was  not  an  act  of  the  Boston  Town  Meeting 
or  of  the  General  Court  which  they  had  not  eagerly 
followed ;  there  had  been  no  crisis  in  the  affairs  of 
the  colony  which  had  not  had  its  Lexington  town- 
meeting  to  discuss  the  matter  and  to  instruct  the 
town's  representative.  And  that  action  was  guided, 
those  instructions  were  written  by  one  of  the  great- 
est patriots  and  keenest  minds  of  that  time  of  great 
men, — Parson  Jonas  Clarke,  who  for  fifty  years  was 
minister  of  Lexington  and  whose  sermons  were 
trumpet  calls  to  stand  fast  in  the  cause  of  Liberty. 
Never  was  there  a  better  school  for  patriots  and 
a  better  teacher  of  the  true  principles  of  liberty  than 
were  those  town  meetings  of  Lexington,  and  that 
leader  in   those  meetings, — Parson  Clarke. 

It  was  no  mere  coincidence,  therefore,  that 
brought  Hancock  and  Sam  Adams  into  Lexington 
on  the  i8th  of  April,  1775,  and  found  them  at 
the  house  of  Parson  Clarke  on  the  very  night  that 
Gage  had  fixed  upon  to  strike  the  first  blow  against 
the  patriot  cause.  Hancock  and  Adams  both  had 
a  high  price  on  their  heads;  the  very  shadow  of  the 
gallows  was  over  them;  but  they  were  serenely 
journeying  to  the  second  Continental  Congress, 
sure  that  the  people  would  protect  them  from  all 
injury.  And  the  inhabitants  of  Lexington  were 
doing  their  part  that  night;  for  around  Parson 
Clarke's  house  they  had  placed  a  guard  of  eight 
minute-men   to   keep   careful   watch.     About   mid- 


Samuel  Adams:    New  England  Democrat    39 


night  up  came  Paul  Revere  clattering  and  shout- 
ing ;  there  was  hurried  conference  between  Re- 
vere, Hancock  and  Adams;  and  while  the  latter 
wanted  to  shoulder  muskets  and  take  part  in  the 
coming  fight,  they  were  persuaded  that  their  lives 
were  too  precious  to  be  put  in  danger.  Sergeant 
Munroe  escorted  them  by  back  roads  to  a  place 
of  safety  in  Woburn,  and  got  back  to  Lexington 
Green  in  time  to  line  up  the  minute-men.  As 
Adams  started  out  across  the  hills  in  the  first  gray 
of  the  dawn,  he  is  said  to  have  exclaimed:  "What 
a  glorious  morning  for  America."  It  was  indeed 
a  glorious  morning,  and  it  meant  the  crowning  of 
Samuel  Adams'  enormous  labors  during  those  eleven 
terrible  years.  From  one  point  to  another  he  had 
led  the  town  meetings  until  from  humble  petition- 
ing they  had  gone  on  to  proud  defiance  of  the  King 
and  at  last  had  arrived  at  the  place  where  they  were 
ready  to  take  up  arms  and  to  surrender  their  lives 
in  defence  of  liberty. 

Samuel  Adams  remained  a  conspicuous  figure 
until  his  death  in  1803.  He  took  a  leading  part 
in  all  the  congresses  of  the  Revolution  and  signed 
the  Declaration  of  Independence.  Moreover  it  was 
he  who  prepared  the  articles  of  confederation.  But 
from  the  opening  of  the  Revolutionary  War  his  in- 
fluence and  reputation  seemed  slowly  to  decline,  so 
that  not  until  comparatively  recent  years  has  his 
name  begun  to  emerge  from  the  sort  of  eclipse  in 
which  it  rested  behind  those  of  such  men  as  Wash- 
ington, John  Adams  and  Jefferson.  Why  was  this? 
Mainly,   I   think,  because   Samuel  Adams  had  the 


40  New  England  Conscience 

abilities  of  a  revolutionary  rather  than  of  a  con- 
structive statesman.  He  quite  strenuously  opposed, 
for  example,  the  acceptance  of  the  Constitution  by 
the  Massachusetts  Convention,  and  only  reluctantly 
agreed  to  its  adoption  when  he  perceived  that  further 
opposition  would  be  vain.  He  was  a  Republicati. 
moreover,  in  a  State  which  at  that  time  was  over- 
whelmingly Federalist;  yet,  curiously  enough,  while 
the  other  Republicans  had  followed  the  free-thinking 
of  Jefferson  and  Paine,  he  continued  a  staunch  sup- 
porter of  the  strictest  Calvinism.  His  absorption  in 
politics,  furthermore,  had  made  him  wholly  neglect- 
ful of  such  lesser  matters  as  the  support  of  his  fam- 
ily, and  had  induced  a  carelessness  in  money  afifairs 
which  had  laid  him  open  to  charges,  unquestionably 
unfounded,  of  having,  as  tax-collector,  misappropri- 
ated funds.  Finally  his  long  years  of  fighting  against 
British  tyranny  had  made  him.  to  use  a  good  Yankee 
word,  "cantankerous,"  and  militated  against  his 
making  those  concessions  to  the  views  and  opinions 
of  others  so  essential  in  the  building  of  a  state,  Hi^ 
election,  therefore,  in  1794,  after  he  had  served 
some  years  as  Lieutenant  Governor,  to  the  governor- 
ship of  Massachusetts,  was  in  the  nature  of  a  re- 
ward somewhat  perfunctorily  given,  in  recognition 
of  his  earlier  services,  rather  than  a  spontaneou*; 
choice  of  the  people.  An  appreciation  of  this  fact, 
as  well  as  the  increasing  infirmities  of  his  seventy- 
five  years,  led  him,  therefore,  in  1797,  to  decline  a 
renomination.  He  passed  the  remaining  six  or 
seven  years  of  his  life  sitting  in  his  modest  house  or 
his  pleasant   garden   in   Winter   Street   exchanging 


Samuel  Adams:    Neiv  England  Democrat    41 


reminiscences  with  his  contemporaries,  fast  thinning 
in  number,  or  receiving  the  respectful  homage  of  the 
\ounger  generation. 

On  the  domestic  side,  the  burden,  ever  since  their 
early  marriage,  had  been  mainly  carried  by  his  ex- 
cellent and  devoted  wife  (who,  by  her  extraordinary 
thrift,  made  up  in  some  measure  for  his  lack  of  it,) 
and  by  his  many  friends  who  had  to  go  so  far,  some- 
times, as  to  fit  him  out  with  such  clothes  and  sums 
of  money  as  he  must  have  to  make  a  decent  ap- 
pearance as  a  public  man.  His  only  son,  Samuel, 
was  graduated  at  Harvard  in  1771,  studied  medicine 
with  Dr.  Joseph  Warren,  served  as  a  surgeon 
throughout  the  Revolution,  but  received,  in  that 
service,  such  damage  to  his  constitution  that  he 
died  in  1788.  The  money  received  from  the  gov- 
ernment as  compensation  for  the  services  of  this  son 
was  the  sole  support  of  ]\Tr.  Adams  during  his  final 
years.  It  is  interesting  in  this  connection  to  re- 
member that  the  very  large  sums  left  in  charity,  a 
few  years  ago,  by  Dr.  John  and  Miss  Belinda  Ran- 
dall, were  derived  almost  wholly  from  the  increment 
of  that  Adams  property  (they  being  grand-children 
of  Samuel  Adams  through  his  daughter)  on  Winter. 
Washington  and  other  down-town  streets,  w^hich 
was  of  no  contributory  support  to  their  illustrious 
grandfather. 

Another  descendant,  Mr.  William  V.  Wells, 
published  some  years  ago  a  biography  of  his  an- 
cestor which  fills  three  volumes,  and  which,  ir 
seems  to  me,  tries  to  claim  too  much  for  Samuel 
Adams.     He  w^as  a  great  figure, — seemingly  an  in- 


42  New  England  Conscience 


dispensable  figure — during  the  decade  preceding  the 
Battle  of  Lexington ;  but  his  greatest  work  for  his 
country  ended  on  that  April  morning  when  he  stood 
on  the  hills  of  Lexington  and  uttered  (or  might 
have  uttered)  that  prophetic  phrase.  The  Massa- 
chusetts Town  Meeting  had  done  its  noble  work; 
and  Samuel  Adams,  the  man  of  the  town  meeting, 
the  man  who  never  faltered,  never  lost  courage, 
never  failed  in  resourcefulness,  who  would  neither 
accept  bribes  nor  heed  threats,  the  "Great  Incendi- 
ary," as  Hutchinson  called  him,  in  whose  hands 
(as  Hutchinson  also  declared)  all  the  other  men 
were  but  puppets, — that  man  up  to  that  day  had  been 
the  guiding  spirit  of  it  all.  His  cousin,  John  Adams, 
once  enthusiastically  called  him  "the  wedge  of  steel 
which  split  the  knot  of  lignum  vitae  that  tied  Amer- 
ica to  England."  That  is  a  true  description  of  the 
part  he  played ;  and  the  force  he  used  was  the 
enormous  democratic  power  of  the  New  England 
Town  Meeting.  Those  meetings  were  the  main 
strength  of  the  colonies,  it  was  they  which  brought 
these  colonies  together  in  a  splendid  union,  it  was 
they  that  held  the  States  together  through  the  ter- 
rible crisis  of  the  Civil  War,  and  we  cannot  have 
real  democracy  in  our  huge  modern  cities  until  we 
find  some  way  of  getting  at  the  people  themselves 
as  Sam  Adams  reached  them  face  to  face  in  the 
town  meetings  of  the  Old  South  Meeting  House 
and  Faneuil   Hall. 


The  Town  of  Lexington  43 

III 

The  Town  of  Lexington* 


HISTORIANS,  now  careful  dissectors 
of  the  body  politic,  were  once  mere 
brilliant  painters  of  its  outward  show. 
Historical  writers  of  the  last  century 
dealt  only  with  wars  and  kings,  with 
triumphs  and  catastrophes,  heedless  of  the  great  body 
of  the  people  through  whom  civilization  really  grows. 
Such  a  king  reigned  and  died,  such  wars  he  waged, 
such  alliances  he  made, — that  was  the  substance 
of  a  chronicle  as  brilliant  as  it  was  superficial. 
Births  of  everyday  reformers,  deaths  of  common- 
place martyrs,  wars  of  classes  and  of  trade,  holy 
alliances  of  virtue  and  suffering,  devil's  alliances 
cf  greed  and  hatred, — these,  the  real  events  of  his- 
tory, had  no  place  in  this  gazette  of  royalty.  The 
progress  of  nations  was,  for  those  old-time  chron- 
iclers, a  kind  of  lordly  game  in  which  none  but  the 
honor  cards  had  value.  That  this  surface-life  of 
the  court  and  battle-field  was  founded  upon  a 
steadily  advancing  under-life  of  the  people,  that 
these  kingly  happenings  were  but  the  effects  of  pro- 
founder  social  and  industrial  causes,  are  facts  of 
quite  recent  recognition. 

It  is  true  that  in  its  nearly  three  hundred  years 


*Address  at  the  Celebration  of  the  200th  Anniversary 
of  the  Incorporation  of  Lexington,  June  8,  1913. 


44  New  England  Conscience 


of  history,  what  is  now  the  United  States  of  Amer- 
ica has  had  two  great  wars, — wars  that  in  their  re- 
sults were  among  the  most  momentous  in  all  his- 
tor}^;  but  those  conflicts  were  merely  the  outcrop- 
ping, so  to  speak,  of  vaster  and  deeper  forces,  to 
which  war  was  but  incidental.  For  the  significant 
history  of  America  has  been  one  not  of  kings,  but  of 
families;  not  of  courts^  but  of  communities;  not  of 
bloody  conquests  of  enemies,  but  of  a  splendid  mas- 
tery of  nature  and  of  self. 

It  was  mainly  for  the  sake  of  their  wives  and 
children  that  the  Pilgrims  adventured  to  the  in- 
hospitable shores  of  ^Massachusetts ;  it  was  the  desire 
to  establish  a  community  life  ordered  as  they  be- 
lieved it  should  be  that  brought  the  Puritans  to 
Salem  and  to  Boston ;  it  was  not  single  rovers,  it 
was  settlers  with  their  families  who  pushed  their 
brave  way  to  Ohio,  to  the  Mississippi,  and  across 
prairie  and  mountain  to  the  far  North-We5t. 

Social  stability,  industry,  faith,  love  of  freedom, — 
these  were  the  corner-stones  of  every  lasting  struc- 
ture which  our  forefathers  upreared.  The  greedy 
Spaniard,  murderously  seeking  treasure,  the  thrifty 
Frenchman,  exploiting  the  fur-trade,  the  roystering 
Gentlemen  Adventurers,  imagining  the  sand-heaps 
of  Virginia  to  be  fields  of  gold,  either  had  no  fam- 
ilies or  had  cut  themselves  adrift  to  court  fortune 
in  the  unknown  West.  But  on  the  "Mayflower," 
household  goods  and  distaffs  filled  the  spaces  which, 
in  the  ships  of  earlier  voyagers,  had  been  given  to 
weapons  and  munitions  of  war.  The  Plymouth 
Company  came  for  peace,  for  quietude,  for  escape 


The  Town  of  Lexington  -1-5 


Irom  a  tyrannical  government.  With  them  their 
uomenkind  were  first,  for  upon  their  wives  and 
(Iniighters  the  weiglit  of  persecution  fell  most 
hravily.  And  most  of  those  who  followed  the  Pil- 
grims, whether  to  New  England,  to  Virginia,  or 
to  New  Amsterdam,  had  in  view  that  permanent 
settlement  which  means  the  bringing  up  of  a  fam- 
ily and  the  establishing  of  a  stable,  sober  and  in- 
dustrious community.  These  conditions  of  true 
colonization  were  especially  conspicuous,  however, 
in  Massachusetts  Bay,  the  settlers  wherein,  mind- 
ful of  the  supreme  importance  of  right  training  in 
youth,  opened  a  Latin  School  five  years  after  they 
landed,  founded  Harvard  College  only  three  years 
later,  and  enacted  a  general  school-law  (the  first  in 
the  world)   in   1647. 

Of  the  preeminently  staid  and  enlightened  com- 
miuiity  of  which  Harvard  College  was  the  early- 
established  centre,  Lexington  was,  so  to  speak,  the 
third  child,  the  earlier  offspring,  set  apart  from  the 
original  Cambridge  of  1644,  having  been  Billerica 
far  to  the  north,  and  Newton  to  the  west  and  south. 

With  the  exception  of  that  one  "Glorious  morn- 
ing," when  seventy  plain  farmers  stood  and  died 
like  heroes,  the  outward  history  of  Lexington  has 
been  quiet,  uneventful,  even  humdrum.  To  at- 
tempt to  make  of  it  a  dramatic  narrative  would  be 
absurd.  To  cite  it,  however,  as  a  superlative  ex- 
ample of  forces  which  made  America  great  in  the 
past  and  which  should  make  her  greater  in  the 
future,  is  perhaps  worth  while. 

Six    generations    have    passed    since    March    31, 


4^  New  England  Conscience 

1 713  (N.S.),  when  the  "Inhabitants  or  farmers 
dwelling  on  a  certain  Tract  of  Out  Lands  within 
the  Township  of  Cambridge  in  the  County  of  Mid- 
dlesex liuing  remote  from  the  Body  of  the  Town 
towards  Concord.  .  .  .  being  now  increased 
.  .  .  obtained  Consent  of  the  Town  &  made 
Application  ...  to  be  made  a  Separate  & 
distinct  Town,  upon  such  Terms  as  they  &  the 
Town  of  Cambridge  have  agreed  upon ;"  and  since 
the  General  Court  of  Massachusetts  "ORDERED 
that  the  aforesaid  Tract  of  Land  known  by  the 
Name  of  the  Northern  Precinct  in  Cambridge  be 
henceforth  made  a  separate  &  distinct  Town  by  the 
Name  of  LEXINGTON  ...  &  that  the 
Inhabitants  of  the  said  Town  of  Lexington  be  en- 
titled to  Have,  Use,  Exercise  &  Enjoy  all  such 
Immunities  Powers  &  Privileges  as  other  Towns  of 
this  Province  have  &  do  by  Law  Use  Exercise  and 
njoy. 

In  each  of  these  six  generations  the  world  has 
made  always  longer  strides  towards  that  perfect 
civilization  to  which  mankind  aspires.  Therefore 
the  two  centuries  of  Lexington's  corporate  life  have 
been  the  most  fruitful  in  all  human  history.  Since 
genuine  democracy  did  not  begin  until  1688,  prac- 
tically the  whole  development  of  mankind  out  of 
feudalism  is  measured  by  the  comparatively  short 
space  since  Lexington  was  born. 

In  the  first  of  those  six  generations  was  establish- 
ed the  newspaper,  perhaps  the  most  far-reaching 
of  the  forces  of  enlightenment;  in  the  second  the 
people  of  America  issued  successful  from  the  first 


The  Town  of  Lexington  47 

great  conflict  between  privilege  and  justice;  in  the 
third,  the  face  of  Europe  and  the  whole  current  of 
her  affairs  were  changed  by  the  French  Revolution 
and  Napoleon's  astonishing  career;  the  fourth  gen- 
eration witnessed  first  the  Reform  Bill  and  then 
the  epoch-making  upheavals  of  1848;  in  the  fifth 
the  people  of  the  United  States  were  forever  welded 
by  a  civil  conflict  theretofore  unheard  of  in  its  mag- 
nitude; while  in  the  sixth  there  has  been  such  in- 
dustrial and  social  transformation  as  has  filled  the 
world  of  1913  with  problems  unknown  and  in- 
conceivable in  1881. 

In  these  six  wonderful  periods  of  democratic  ad- 
vance, this  Town  played  a  conspicuous  part  only 
in  the  second,  but  what  she  did  in  that  second  gen- 
eration not  only  profoundly  affected  the  four  gener- 
ations succeeding,  but  will  influence  world  history 
to  the  very  end  of  time.  In  the  every-day  life  of 
Lexington,  moreover,  have  been  conspicuously  ex- 
hibited those  determining  forces  which  created  New 
England,  the  Middle  West,  and  the  great  North- 
West, — the  forces  of  family  integrity,  community 
responsibility,  and  sober  striving  towards  ever  high- 
er standards  and  ideals. 

In  1 7 13,  when  the  Order  of  the  General  Court 
was  passed,  there  were  within  the  territory  of  Lex- 
ington less  than  five  hundred  persons.  Partly  be- 
cause the  Town  had  been  settled  by  the  overflowing 
of  surrounding  communities,  partly  because  the 
area  now  centering  in  the  Common  had  been  held 
for  many  years  in  the  so-called  Pelham  grant,  a 
larger  proportion  of  those  inhabitants  lived  on  the 


48  New  England  Conscience 


outskirts  than  in  the  neighborhood  of  the  single 
meeting-house.  Therefore,  during  more  than  a 
half-century  after  its  first  settlement,  the  people  of 
Cambridge  Farms  were  compelled  to  travel  from 
five  to  ten  miles  to  the  meeting-house  at  Cambridge, 
and  for  fully  another  fifty  years  after  Cambridge 
had  permitted  the  erection  of  a  meeting-house  at  the 
Farms,  most  of  the  worshipers  were  still  obliged  to 
journey  from  one  to  three  miles  every  Sabbath  to 
attend  the  services.  Yet,  because  of  the  strict  Puri- 
tanism of  the  day,  which  frowned  upon  or  actually 
punished  absence  from  the  Sunday  meeting,  the 
townspeople, — thus  forced  to  spend  at  least  one 
day  in  seven  in  each  other's  company — had  develop- 
ed a  solidarity  and  community  feeling  otherwise 
difficult,  if  not  impossible,  to  bring  about. 

For,  however  scattered  the  population,  every- 
thing in  those  Puritan  days  must  focus  in  the  vil- 
lage meeting-house.  Attendance  upon  Divine  ser- 
vice was  made  urgent  both  by  public  opinion  and  by 
fear  of  future  punishment.  Moreover,  the  town- 
meetings — held,  down  to  1846,  within  the  sacred 
building — gave  almost  as  much  time  to  such  parish 
questions  as  the  choice  of  a  minister,  his  compensa- 
tion, and  his  orthodoxy,  as  to  the  secular  problems 
of  roads  and  school-houses.  Within  the  meeting- 
house every  child  whose  parents  hoped  for  its  salva- 
tion must  be  baptized,  every  older  citizen  who  cared 
for  public  opinion  must  have  a  regular  sitting,  every 
sinner  might  at  any  moment  be  summoned  for  public 
confession  and  judgment.  While  many  could  not, 
and  many   did   not,   become  legal   members  of  the 


The  Town  of  Lexington  49 

church  body,  only  those  admitted  to  church  fellow- 
ship enjoyed  full  measure  of  community  rights ;  and 
ambition  for  social  standing  could  get  its  accepted 
seal  only  from  the  church  organization,  which,  by 
its  seating  in  the  meeting-house,  fixed  for  five  or 
ten-year  periods  the  exact  degree  of  dignity  of 
every  family. 

Furthermore,  many  personal  disputes  in  the  com- 
munity were  settled  by  the  minister,  under  whose 
charge  also,  direct  or  indirect,  was  the  schooling 
of  the  children,  and  in  whose  study  those  who 
sought  a  higher  education  prepared,  as  a  rule,  for 
Harvard  or  Yale  College.  Those  institutions  them- 
selves existed  at  that  time  almost  solely  for  the 
training  of  the  ministry ;  and  in  many  other  ways 
there  was  continually  emphasized  to  all  the  people 
of  a  New  England  community  the  supremacy  not 
only  in  spiritual,  but  also  in  temporal  matters,  of 
the  Puritan  Church. 

That  church,  however,  was  not  autocratic;  it 
was  Congregational,  ruled  in  temporal  affairs  by 
the  parish  (and  every  early  New  England  town 
was  also  a  parish  or  several  parishes),  and  in  spirit- 
ual matters  by  those  admitted  to  church  fellowship. 
Each  New  England  town  was,  therefore,  a  re- 
ligious democracy,  which,  inspired  by  Biblical  ex- 
ample, put  conspicuous  emphasis  upon  family  life, 
parental  control  and  community  responsibility. 
Every  influence  in  a  Massachusetts  town  during  the, 
eighteenth,  and  far  into  the  nineteenth,  century 
tended  to  magnify  the  responsibility  of  the  male 
head  of  a  family  to  rear  his  children  in  godliness 


50  "New  England  Conscience 


and  industry,  to  bring  them  early  into  communion 
with  the  orthodox  faith,  and  to  inspire  them  with 
a  feeling  of  personal  obligation  towards  the  place 
in  which  they  lived. 

Second  only  to  the  meeting-house  as  an  educator 
in  family  and  community  responsibility,  was  the 
town-meeting,  which,  because  it  dealt  with  church 
affairs,  and  in  most  instances  was  held  in  the  meet- 
ing-house, partook  not  a  little  of  the  sacredness  of 
the  actual  Sabbath  service.  The  New  England 
town-meeting  was,  and  is,  the  most  democratic 
parliament  in  the  world.  The  moderator  has,  with- 
in certain  rigid  limits,  autocratic  powers ;  but  so 
long  as  those  bounds  are  not  crossed,  the  humblest 
voter  is  equal,  in  freedom  of  debate  and  liberty  of 
challenge,  as  well  as  in  the  actual  count  of  votes, 
to  the  richest  or  most  highly  educated.  As  soon 
as  a  youth  is  twenty-one  he  may  begin  to  practice 
every  right,  responsibility  and  duty  of  citizenship ; 
and  long  before  that  day,  the  average  village-bred 
boy  is  getting  an  admirable  education  in  social  re- 
sponsibility by  listening  to  the  often  tedious,  often 
irrelevant,  but  always  thoroughly  democratic,  town- 
meeting  debates. 

The  very  legislative  Order  which  created  Lex- 
ington commanded  the  constable  to  call  a  town- 
meeting;  and  within  six  days  the  "Inhabitants  duly 
qualified  for  Votes"  had  not  only  elected  numerous 
town  officers,  but  their  selectmen  had  agreed  that 
they  would  "build  a  Pound,  .  .  .  erect  a 
Payer  of  Stocks,  and  Provide  the  Town  with 
Waights  and  measurs."    Two  weeks  later,  the  citi- 


The  Town  of  Lexington  51 

zens,  duly  assembled,  granted  "416  Pounds  mony 
to  the  Comitte  for  Building  of  the  meeting-house." 

That  second  meeting-house  (the  first  having 
been  built  in  1692)  stood,  as  did  its  successor 
(erected  in  1794  and  burned  in  1846)  on  the 
easterly  end  of  the  Common.  The  Common  itself 
had  been  purchased  only  two  years  before  the 
Town's  incorporation  from  "Nibour"  Muzzy;  so 
that  almost  contemporaneously  with  the  erection  of 
Lexington  were  established  the  forum  for  inciting 
and  the  theatre  for  enacting  the  first  battle  of  the 
Revolutionary  War. 

In  June  of  the  year  following  incorporation, 
the  Selectmen  "agred  that  John  Muzzy  should 
have  thare  aprobation  to  Kep  a  publique  House  of 
Entertainement :  and  his  father  did  Ingage  before 
the  selectmen  to  a  Comadate  his  son  John  with 
stabble  roome  haye  and  Pastuering:  so  fare  as  he 
stood  In  nead :  for  the  Suport  of  Strangers." 

Eleven  years  earlier,  John  Muzzy's  father,  Ben- 
jamin, had  established  the  first  tavern  in  Cambridge 
P'arms,  on  the  edge  of  what  he  later  sold  for  a  Com- 
mon and  close  to  the  meeting-house.  If  that  old 
Muzzy,  or  Buckman,  Tavern,  which  the  citizens 
have  so  generously  and  wisely  acquired,  could  speak, 
what  a  story  it  could  tell:  of  the  strangers  coming 
from  New  Hampshire  and  Vermont  for  entertain- 
ment— as  it  was  called — on  their  last  night  before 
reaching  Boston;  of  the  detailed  town  gossip  ex- 
changed there  over  flip  and  cider  betwixt  Sabbath 
services;  of  the  sermons  carried  across  in  drowsy 
summer  days  from  the  open  windows  of  the  meet- 


52  New  England  Conscience 


ing-house,  sermons  that,  as  Colonial  affairs  became 
more  critical,  grew  more  and  more  to  resemble  the 
calls  to  battle  of  the  old  Hebrew  prophets;  of  the 
long  debates  in  town-meeting  over  the  schools,  the 
roads,  the  acts  of  the  Great  and  General  Court  and 
the  unwarranted  usurpations  of  his  Majesty's  gov- 
ernment; and,  finally,  of  that  cool  night  in  April 
when  the  alarm  of  Revere  having  called  the  Min- 
ute-Men together  at  two  in  the  morning,  the 
"greater  part  of  them"  being  dismissed  temporarily, 
"went  to  Buckman's  Tavern,"  and  then,  at  half- 
past  four,  precipitately  rushed  out  again  to  fall  in 
line, — seventy  farmers  opposing  eight  hundred 
British  troops.  The  old  house  itself  actually  took 
part  in  the  affray,  for  from  its  back  door,  and  again 
from  its  front  door,  at  least  one  man  aimed  at  the 
British,  and  drew  upon  the  building  a  return  fire, 
the  marks  of  which  remain  to-day. 

The  courageous  decision  not  only  to  face  an  over- 
whelming foe,  but  also  to  take  the  imminent  risk 
of  being  hanged,  was  no  sudden  impulse  on  the  part 
of  those  plain  citizens  of  Lexington.  They  were 
not  hot-headed  youth,  bred  to  idleness  and  eager  for 
a  quarrel ;  they  were  not  mercenaries  with  whom 
fighting  is  a  trade;  they  were  not  swashbucklers 
glad  to  seize  any  excuse  for  rioting  and  bloodshed. 
They  were  sober,  thinking  citizens,  for  the  most 
part  heads  of  families.  Their  wives  and  children 
were  within  sound  of  their  muskets;  their  homes, 
their  lands,  their  church, — all  that  they  held  dear — 
were  witnesses  to  their  boldness  in  defying  the 
power  of  Great  Britain,  a  power  that  could,  if  the 


The  Town  of  Lexington  53 

issue  of  the  conflict  went  against  them,  wipe  out 
their  township,  beggar  their  families  and  gibbet 
them  as  rebels  to  their  King. 

It  is  true  that  most  of  them  were  accustomed  to 
the  bearing  of  arms.  Those  were  still  pioneer  days 
when  the  use  of  the  musket  was  a  necessary  part  of 
education ;  and  many  of  the  Minute-Men  had  been 
honorable  actors  in  the  long  war  against  the  French 
and  Indians.  But  they  were  not  soldiers  in  the 
usual  meaning;  they  were  citizen-defenders,  driven 
to  the  desperate  stand  they  took  by  a  long  series  of 
tyrannies,  the  continuance  of  which,  they  foresaw, 
would  be  worse  than  even  forfeiture  and  hanging. 
Every  man  of  them  realized  what  he  was  doing, 
knew  why  he  did  it,  and  stood  ready  to  accept  the 
consequences.  This  fact,  and  also  the  fact  that,  in 
the  proportion  of  those  killed  and  wounded  to  the 
total  force  engaged,  this  was  one  of  the  bloodiest 
of  battles,  make  the  fight  on  Lexington  Green  a 
great  event  in  human  history. 

So  far  as  concerns  Massachusetts  as  a  whole,  the 
resistance  at  Lexington  may  be  said  to  date  from 
1646,  when  the  Colony  made  its  first  formal  protest 
against  the  pretensions  of  the  English  Parliament; 
but  so  far  as  concerns  Lexington  itself,  the  Battle 
may  be  declared  to  have  begun  with  the  ordination, 
in  1698,  of  the  Reverend  John  Hancock,  grand- 
father of  him  whose  bold  signature  stands  first  upon 
the  Declaration.  The  Reverend  John  Hancock 
ministered  to  the  people  of  Lexington  for  fifty- 
five  years,  a  real  shepherd  to  his  sheep,  one  who 
made  them  feel  in  the  highest  degree  their  responsi- 


54  New  England  Conscience 


bilities  to  their  families  and  to  the  community  in 
which  they  lived.  Dying  in  1752,  "Bishop"  Han- 
cock, as  he  was  sometimes  called,  was  succeeded  by 
his  grandson-in-law,  the  Reverend  Jonas  Clarke, 
an  unfailing  fount  of  inspiration  to  those  who  de- 
fended human  rights  at  Lexington.  From  his  or- 
dination in  1755,  Parson  Clarke,  both  in  the  pulpit 
and  on  the  floor  of  the  town-meeting,  kept  before 
his  people  the  supreme  sacredness  of  liberty,  the 
right  of  resistance  to  oppression,  and  the  solemn 
duty  of  transmitting  to  posterity  the  privileges  of 
freemen  that  the  fathers  had  won. 

The  instructions  given  to  the  successive  represen- 
tatives to  the  General  Court,  and  to  other  assem- 
blages, by  Lexington  town-meetings,  beginning  as 
early  as  1765,  and  extending  practically  through  the 
Revolutionary  War,  were  all  written  by  Jonas 
Clarke,  and  are  models  of  trenchant  English  and  of 
cogent  reasoning.  In  remonstrating  against  the 
Stamp  Act,  Parson  Clarke  said,  through  the 
medium  of  the  town-meeting: — 

"...  when  we  Consider  the  invaluable 
Rights  and  Liberties  we  now  possess,  the  Firmness 
and  Resolution  of  our  Fathers,  for  the  Support  and 
Preservation  of  them  for  us,  and  how  Much  we 
owe  to  our  Selves  and  to  Posterity,  we  Cannot  but 
look  upon  it  as  an  unpardonable  Neglect,  any 
longer  to  delay  expressing  how  deeply  we  are  Con- 
cerned at  Some  Measures  adopted  by  the  late  Min- 
istry." (and)  .  .  .  "We  earnestly  recommend 
to  You  (our  representatives)  the  most  calm,  decent 
and  dispassionate  Measures,  for  an  open,  Explicit 


The  Town  of  Lexington  55 


and  resolute  assertion  and  vindication  of  our  Char- 
ter Rights  and  Liberties;  and  that  the  Same  be  so 
entered  upon  Record,  that  the  World  may  see,  and 
future  Generations  Know,  that  the  present  both 
knew  and  valued  the  Rights  they  enjoyed,  and  did 
not  tamely  resign  them  for  Chains  and   Slaver}\" 

Subsequent  instructions,  remonstrances  and  re- 
solves all  breathe  the  same  spirit  of  lofty  patriotism ; 
and  in  due  time  it  was  resolved,  unanimously, 
"That  if  any  Head  of  a  Family  in  this  Town,  or 
any  Person  shall  from  this  time  forward ;  and  un- 
till  the  Duty  be  taken  of? ;  purchase  any  Tea,  or 
Use,  or  consume  any  Tea  in  their  Famelies,  such 
person  shall  be  looked  upon  as  an  Enemy  to  this 
Town,  and  to  this  Country,  and  shall  by  this  Town 
be  treated  with  Neglect  and  Contempt," 

The  work  of  Parson  Clarke  was  not  limited, 
however,  to  these  occasional  documents.  Almost 
every  Sunday,  in  the  ten  years  preceding  the  open- 
ing of  the  Revolution,  he  is  said  to  have  urged  from 
the  pulpit,  in  such  indirect  manner  as  was  consistent 
with  due  reverence,  the  fundamental  truths  for 
which  he  believed  the  New  England  Church,  as 
well  as  the  New^  England  Town-Meeting,  should 
unalterably  stand.  Consequently,  the  very  walls 
of  the  meeting-house  became  saturated  with  the 
spirit  of  resistance  to  oppression ;  and  the  humble 
farmer  folk  who  listened  Sunday  after  Sunday  to 
their  parson's  preaching  must  have  come  to  regard 
it  as  beyond  question  that  they  should  go  to  any 
lengths  necessary  to  preserve  for  their  children  the 
heritage  of  freedom  which  they  and  their  ancestors 


56  New  England  Conscience 


had,  by  their  labor  and  self-sacrifice,  so  hardly  won. 
Indeed,  as  early  as  December,  1773,  in  their  re- 
monstrance against  the  taxation  of  tea,  the  inhab- 
itants of  Lexington  declared:  "We  are  ready  and 
resolved  to  concur  with"  .  .  .  ("our  brethren 
in  Boston,  and  other  Towns")  "in  every  rational 
Measure,  that  may  be  Necessary  for  the  Preserva- 
tion or  Recovery  of  our  Rights  and  Liberties  as 
Englishmen  and  Christians;  and  we  trust  in  GOD 
That  should  the  State  of  Our  Affairs  require  it. 
We  shall  be  ready  to  Sacrifice  our  Estates,  and  every 
thing  dear  in  Life,  Yea  and  Life  itself,  in  support 
of  the  common  Cause." 

Thus  was  plainly  foreshadowed  the  beginning  of 
revolt,  the  only  question  being  that  of  time  and 
place.  Consequently,  when  it  was  ordained  that 
the  time  for  armed  resistance  should  be  in  the  spring 
of  1775,  and  that  the  place  should  be  along  the 
march  of  the  British  troops  from  Boston  to  destroy 
the  military  stores  at  Concord,  the  little  band  of 
Lexington  Minute-Men  took  it  as  a  matter  of 
course  that  they  should  interpose  their  seventy 
bodies  across  the  pathway  of  eight  hundred  troops. 
They  could  have  had  no  thought  or  hope  of  stop- 
ping that  expedition ;  they  had  no  fanatic  dream 
of  martyrdom ; — they  simply  were  carrying  out  at 
the  foreordained  moment  the  instructions  which 
they  had  received,  Sunday  after  Sunday,  and  in 
town-meeting  after  town-meeting,  from  the  voice 
and  pen  of  their  great  spiritual  leader. 

Not  even  the  soul  of  Jonas  Clarke  could  lead, 
however,  unless  there  were  other  great  souls  ready 


The  Town  of  Lexington  57 

to  be  led.  The  Minute-Men  of  Lexington  were 
not  of  so-called  noble  or  even  gentle  blood,  the 
rules  of  chivalry  were  unknown  to  them,  they  were 
unread  in  the  tales  of  heroes,  whether  classic  or 
medijeval.  But  they  and  their  forebears  for  nearly 
two  centuries  had  loved  freedom  in  the  abstract, 
and  had  known  it  in  the  concrete.  They  had  ruled 
themselves  in  church  and  in  town-meeting;  and 
they  knew  that  the  acts  of  England,  unless  resisted, 
must  put  an  end  to  that  self-government.  To  stop 
the  British  troops  was  impossible;  but  to  show  to 
the  British  government  that  they,  the  fathers  of  the 
hamlet  of  Lexington,  were  indeed  "ready,"  as  they 
had  many  months  before  declared  "to  Sacrifice, 
Yea,  Life  itself  in  support  of  the  common  Cause," 
was  possible.  Two  volleys  were  enough  to  disperse 
them ;  but  in  thus  nonchalantly  ending  seven  lives, 
Smith  and  Pitcairn  signed  the  death-warrant  of  the 
British  army  in  America,  severed  from  England  a 
territory  of  enormous  area  and  incalculable  value, 
broke  forever  the  power  of  the  English  throne,  and, 
indirectly,  sowed  the  dragon's  teeth  from  which 
were  to  spring  the  devastating  legions  of  Napoleon. 
Well  may  we  of  Lexington,  of  Massachusetts, 
and  of  all  America,  preserve  this  acre  of  greens- 
ward, bought  from  "Nibour"  Muzzy  for  £16,  but 
made  priceless  by  the  blood  of  those  seven  Minute- 
Men.  Jonas  Parker,  father  of  ten  children,  the 
youngest  still  in  her  teens,  vowed  he  would  never 
run,  and  fell  on  the  spot  where  he  first  stood,  bay- 
oneted in  the  very  act  of  reloading.  Robert  Mun- 
roe,  a  standard  bearer  at  Louisburg,  a  man  advanc- 


58  Neiu  England  Conscience 


ed  in  years,  died  as  Ensign,  holding  again,  at  least 
metaphorically,  the  flag  at  Lexington.  Samuel 
Hadley,  with  three  small  children  at  home,  and 
John  Brown,  a  youth  of  twenty-four,  were  slain  after 
they  had  obeyed  Pitcairn's  order  and  had  left  the 
field.  John  Muzzy,  in  the  prime  of  life,  "was 
found  dead,"  as  John  Munroe  testified,  "near  the 
place  where  our  line  was  formed;"  Caleb  Harring- 
ton, another  youth  of  twenty-four,  was  shot  while 
leaving  the  meeting-house  where,  before  the  fight, 
he  and  others  had  gone  to  remove,  if  possible,  a 
quantity  of  powder;  and  Jonathan  Harrington, 
fighting  literally  before  his  own  fireside,  his  wife 
and  child  watching  him  from  the  window,  crawled, 
mortally  bleeding,  to  his  doorstep  and  died  at  his 
wife's  feet. 

These  men, — some  veterans,  some  scarcely  more 
than  lads,  some  with  the  responsibilities  of  house- 
holds, others  with  the  burdens  and  rewards  of  life 
still  ahead  of  them — fought  and  died,  not  for 
money  or  glory  or  the  love  of  battle.  They  fought 
in  defence  of  the  Town-Meeting,  that  instrument 
which,  in  the  hands  of  freemen,  is  the  basis  of  all 
efficient  government;  they  fought  in  defence  of  the 
family,  that  indispensable  foundation  of  real  civil- 
ization; they  fought  in  defence  of  the  Church, 
which,  whether  Catholic  or  Protestant,  whether 
Episcopal  or  Congregational,  whether  your  faith 
or  my  faith  or  the  faith  of  those  who  worship  in 
divers  and,  to  us,  strange  ways,  is  the  eternal  flame 
that  gives  to  government,  to  family,  and  to  civiliza- 
tion itself,  their  essential  and  enduring  worth. 


Josiah   Quincy,  New  England  Aristocrat     59 


IV 

Josiah  Quincy,  the  New  England  Aristocrat 

I  GIVE  to  my  son,  when  he  shall  arrive  to 
the  age  of  fifteen  years,  Algernon  Sydney's 
works,  John  Locke's  works,  Lord  Bacon's 
works,  Gordon's  Tacitus,  and  Cato's  Let- 
ters. May  the  spirit  of  Liberty  rest  upon 
him!"  Such  was  the  significant  legacy  of  one  of 
the  purest  patriots  of  the  Revolution,  Josiah  Quincy, 
Jr.,  to  one  of  the  sincerest  builders  of  the  Republic, 
his  son,  Josiah  Quincy,  3rd.  And  throughout  that 
son's  long  life,  while  a  member  of  Congress  and  of 
both  Houses  of  the  Legislature,  while  President 
of  Harvard  University,  while  Mayor  of  Boston, 
a  lofty  independence  did  indeed  rest  upon  this  ver- 
satile man.  What  a  period  was  spanned  by  the 
career  of  that  second  mayor  of  historic  Boston ! 
His  earliest  memories  were  of  Gage's  soldiers  peering 
into  the  carriage  windows  as  his  mother  and  he 
hastened  from  beleaguered  Boston ;  the  tidings 
v/hich  reached  his  sinking  senses  were  of  the  closing 
of  the  Union  armies  upon  beleaguered  Richmond. 
Josiah  Quincy  might  have  heard  the  shots  at  Lex- 
ington which  began,  might  have  heard  the  fusillades 
at  Petersburg  which  completed,  the  splendid  strug- 
gle for  American  liberty.  He  knew  Washington  ; 
he  knew  Lincoln ;  and  there  was  scarcely  an  Ameri- 
can statesman  of  the  more  than  two  intervening 
generations  whom  he  had  not  at  least  met.    Predict- 


6o  New  England  Conscience 

ing,  almost  from  the  adoption  of  the  Constitution, 
the  rise  and  arrogance  of  the  slave  power,  he  lived 
to  see  that  power  crushed, — and  in  no  small  degree 
by  the  very  states  created  to  maintain  it.  Vowing 
himself  from  early  manhood  to  a  public  career,  he 
was  permitted  to  fulfill  that  vow,  not  in  just  such 
wise  as  he  intended,  but  still  with  a  wide  range  and 
broad  activities.  His  life  Wing  almost  contem- 
poraneous with  the  infancy  and  adolescence  of  the 
United  States,  he  was  conspicuously  a  mentor  of 
that  lusty  child  and  youth ;  and  when,  the  best- 
known  citizen  of  Boston,  he  sank  to  his  final  sleep, 
he  had  seen  that  Republic,  whose  birth-time  was 
his  own,  just  entering,  with  the  close  of  the  Civil 
War,  upon  its  true,  and  we  pray  its  infinite,  man- 
hood among  the  great  nations  of  the  world. 

Singular,  then,  in  its  extraordinary  length  of 
years  and  its  varied  usefulness,  Josiah  Quincy's 
career  was  remarkable,  too,  in  that,  though  an 
American  publicist,  he  was  not  a  self-made  man. 
On  the  contrary,  in  the  sense  in  which  we  may  use 
the  word,  he  was  an  aristocrat;  by  the  modest  stand- 
ards of  the  last  century,  he  was  rich.  Moreover, 
he  was  liberally  educated,  he  was  strikingly  hand- 
some, he  was  graceful  and  eloquent,  and  behind 
him  was  the  influence,  through  family  alliance,  of 
New  England's  whole  power  and  prestige.  In 
short,  every  gift  which  nature  and  fortune  could 
provide  was  his.  And  mainly  for  that  reason  his 
career  is  of  such  importance  at  this  time.  It  is 
natural,  of  course,  in  a  democratic  country,  it  is 
still  more  natural  in  a  country  pushed,  by  successive 


JOSIAH   QuiNCY 


Josiah   Quincy,  New  England  Aristocrat     6 1 

generations  of  frontiersmen,  across  three  thousand 
miles  of  territory,  that  our  great  men  should  so 
largely  have  been  poor  boys,  that  our  leaders  in  city 
and  state  should  painfully  have  climbed  from  the 
bottom  of  the  social  ladder.  And  it  is  still  more  to 
be  expected  that  our  hero  tales  and  our  biographies 
should  magnify  those  self-made  men,  should  em- 
phasize in  the  life  of  every  prominent  American 
the  mean  and  sordid  obstacles  which  he  had  to 
overcome.  But  the  urgent  need  of  this  country 
is  not  for  more  self-made  men ;  it  is  that  the  men 
made  by  our  vast  and  expensive  systems  of  educa- 
tion, men  who  are  heirs  to  the  luxury,  the  refine- 
ment, the  nice  sense  of  aesthetic  and  ethical  values 
created  by  generations  of  toil,  of  aspiration,  of  seek- 
ing for  the  high  and  good  things  of  life,  should  take 
part  in  the  work  of  democracy;  that  they  should 
not,  as  the  phrase  is,  descend  into  politics,  but  that 
they  should  lift  politics  up  to  them.  The  gravest 
menace  to  our  social  order  is  in  the  fact  that  youth 
of  inherited  brains,  culture  and  opportunity,  young 
men  who  need  never  seek  money,  young  men  who 
have  everything  to  bring  to  the  commonwealth, 
should  not  devote  their  talents  and  their  time  to 
the  public  service;  but  instead,  should  either  dissi- 
pate both  in  social  inanities,  or  should  consume  them 
in  heaping  up  more  riches  for  the  mere  vulgar  pleas- 
ure of  accumulation.  So  crying  is  the  country's 
need  for  the  service  of  well-born,  well-educated, 
well-dowered  youth,  that  history  and  biography 
might  well  turn  away  completely  for  a  time  from 
the  self-made  leader  and  demand  that  the  country 


62  New  England  Conscience 

be  officered  by  men  of  a  more  perfect  manufacture. 

Of  the  most  exquisite  patrician  workmanship  was 
Josiah  Quincy,  the  third  of  that  name.  Let  us, 
therefore,  since  we  are  to  deal  with  an  aristocrat, 
enter  the  long  gallery  of  his  household  and  examine 
some  of  the  ancestral  portraits.  Those  from  Eng- 
land include  many  a  county  magnate,  many  a 
member  of  that  solid  gentry  which  is  really  more 
noble  than  the  House  of  Peers.  Of  the  American 
portraits,  the  first  is  that  of  Edmund  Quincy,  who 
came  to  Boston  in  1639  •"  the  godly  society  of  the 
Rev.  John  Cotton.  No  artisan  or  servitor  was  that 
Edmund  Quincy.  He  was  a  man  of  property,  bring- 
ing with  him  six  servants,  and  purchasing  from 
Chickatawbut,  the  Sachem  of  the  Mos-Wachusetts, 
large  tracts  of  land  in  Braintree,  some  of  which, 
though  now  in  the  city  of  Quincy,  are  still  family 
possessions. 

See  now  the  next  portrait,  that  of  the  second 
Edmund  Quincy,  son  to  the  first.  He  was  a  true 
English  squire,  living  on  his  Braintree  estates  and 
representing  that  part  of  the  colony  in  the  General 
Court.  The  next  portrait  is  of  his  sister  Judith, 
wife  to  John  Hull,  the  colonial  mintmaster;  and 
beside  her  is  the  picture  of  her  lovely  daughter,  who 
married  Judge  Samuel  Sewall  and  is  said  to  have 
received  as  her  dowry  her  own  plump  weight  in 
her  father's  pinetree  shillings.  Not  far  from  the 
portrait  of  the  second  Edmund  Quincy  are  those  of 
his  sons  Daniel  and  Edmund,  3d.  Behind  Daniel 
opens  another  gallery  with  faces  best  known  of  all 
those  that  Massachusetts  holds  in  honor,  for  this 


Josiah    Quincy,  New  England  Aristocrat     63 


Daniel  Quincy  was  the  ancestor  of  John  Adams, 
and  the  later  Adamses.  While  Daniel  was  the 
more  honorable  in  his  descendants,  Edmund  was 
the  more  distinguished  in  his  own  person,  for  he  was 
Chief  Justice  of  the  Supreme  Court  of  Massachu- 
setts and  was  sent  by  the  General  Court  on  a 
special  mission   to   England. 

On  either  side  of  this  Chief  Justice  Edmund 
Quincy  we  see  the  portraits  of  his  two  sons,  Ed- 
mund the  fourth,  who  is  distinguished  chiefly  as  the 
father  of  Dorothy  Q.,  afterwards  Mrs.  John  Han- 
cock;  and  Josiah,  the  first  of  that  name,  who  mar- 
ried a  Jackson  and,  through  the  fortunate  capture 
by  one  of  his  merchant  vessels  of  a  Spanish  treasure 
ship,  greatly  increased  the  family  fortunes.  As  a 
consequence,  at  the  age  of  forty,  this  first  Josiah 
Quincy  retired  from  mercantile  affairs  and  lived  as 
a  country  gentleman  on  his  estates  at  Braintree. 
He  was  an  intimate  friend  of  Benjamin  Franklin, 
and  it  is  in  a  letter  from  Franklin  to  this  friend 
Quincy  that  occurs  the  famous  and  eternally  true 
phrase :  "There  never  was  a  good  war  or  a  bad 
peace." 

This  Colonel  Quincy  (so  styled  to  distinguish 
him  from  the  other  Josiahs)  had  three  sons:  Ed- 
mund, Samuel,  and  the  famous  patriot,  Josiah 
Quincy,  Jr.  Edmund  was  a  leading  merchant  of 
the  Boston  of  Revolutionary  times,  and  died  on  a 
voyage  to  the  West  Indies.  Samuel  was  Solicitor- 
General  for  the  colonies;  but,  electing  the  cause  of 
the  crown,  he  sailed  away  with  Gage's  troops  from 
Boston  and  never  returned  to  America. 


64  New  England  Conscience 


The  third  son,  Josiah  Quincy,  Jr.,  was,  physical- 
ly and  mentally,  a  flame  of  fire,  the  body  rapidly 
wasting  with  disease,  the  mind  burning  with  un- 
quenchable zeal.  He  lived  with  that  mental  in- 
tensity and  physical  self-forgetfulness  characteristic 
of  so  many  consumptives.  Knowing  that  death  must 
come  to  him  early,  he  would  crowd  the  whole  of 
life  into  a  few  short  years.  So  he  threw  himself 
into  the  cause  of  the  outraged  colonies  with  bold- 
ness, almost  with  abandon.  Truly  it  took  courage 
to  write  in  the  public  prints  of  1767,  even  though 
veiled  under  the  name  of  "Hyperion,"  such  words 
as  these:  "Blandishments  will  not  fascinate  us,  nor 
will  threats  of  a  'halter'  intimidate.  For  under  God 
we  are  determined  that,  wheresoever,  whensoever,  or 
howsoever  we  shall  be  called  to  make  our  exit,  we  will 
die  freemen."  And  when,  on  the  night  of  the  Boston 
Tea  Party,  the  old  South  meeting-house  was  burst- 
ing with  an  excited  multitude,  waiting  for  an 
answer  from  Hutchinson,  Josiah  Quincy,  Jr.,  stood 
in  the  gallery  and  poured  hot,  rash  speeches  out  upon 
the  fevered  assembly.  Harrison  Gray,  standing 
below,  warned  "the  young  gentleman  in  the  gal- 
lery" of  the  dreadful  results  of  such  treasonable 
utterances.  To  which  Quincy  retorted:  "If  the 
old  gentleman  on  the  floor  intends,  by  his  warning 
to  'the  young  gentleman  in  the  gallery,'  to  utter 
only  a  friendly  voice  in  the  spirit  of  paternal  ad- 
vice, I  thank  him.  If  his  object  be  to  terrify  and 
intimidate,  I  despise  him." 

Quincy 's  greatest  act,  of  course,  was  his  defence, 
in  association  with  John  Adams,  of  the  perpetrators 


Josiah   Quincy,  New  England  Aristocrat     65 


of  the  so-called  Boston  Massacre.  His  friends 
remonstrated  bitterly  against  a  course  that  threaten- 
ed to  undo  his  career  and  to  nullify  his  previous 
efforts  against  British  tyranny.  Notable  is  his  written 
reply  to  his  father:  .  .  .  "These  criminals,  charged 
with  murder,  are  not  yet  legally  proved  guilty,  and 
therefore,  however  criminal,  are  entitled,  by  the  laws 
of  God  and  man,  to  all  legal  counsel  and  aid." 
...  "I  dare  affirm  that  you  and  this  whole  people 
will  one  day  REJOICE  that  I  became  an  advocate 
for  the  aforesaid  'criminals,'  charged  with  the  mur- 
der of  our  fellow-citizens." 

In  August,  1774,  Josiah  Quincy,  Jr.,  was  chosen 
to  go  to  Europe  on  a  secret  mission  to  the  friends 
of  America.  As  far  as  his  letters  and  journals 
record  it,  this  mission  was  most  successful.  He 
found  the  supporters  of  the  American  cause  far  more 
numerous  than  he  had  anticipated,  and,  with  them, 
he  made  plans  of  so  important  a  nature  that  they 
could  not  be  intrusted  to  letters,  of  so  urgent  a 
character  that  there  was  nothing  except  for  him 
to  bring  them,  locked  in  his  own  bosom,  back  to 
America.  The  tempestuous  seas  of  March  and  an 
access  of  his  disease  made  such  a  course  suicidal ; 
and,  in  fact,  the  greatly  prolonged  voyage  and  the 
discomfort  of  the  ship  proved  too  much  for  his  feeble 
body.  On  April  26,  1775,  three  days  before  the 
vessel  made  its  port  of  Gloucester,  Josiah  Quincy, 
Jr.,  breathed  his  last.  He  had  fought  against  death 
with  all  his  unflagging  courage,  praying  every  hour 
that  he  might  live  long  enough  to  have  but  one 
interview  with  Samuel  Adams  or  Joseph  Warren. 


66  New  England  Conscience 


In  1769,  this  martyr  to  the  cause  of  liberty  had 
married  Abigail  Phillips,  daughter  to  William  Phil- 
lips, and  to  them,  on  the  fourth  of  February,  1772, 
had  been  born  a  son,  Josiah  Quincy,  3rd.  Left 
thus  tragically  a  widow  with  this  infant  son,  Mrs. 
Quincy  dedicated  him  to  the  public  service  and 
brought  him  up  with  Spartan  discipline.  John 
Locke  was  then  in  vogue,  and  Mrs.  Quincy  ap- 
plied both  the  practical  and  the  fantastical  precepts 
oi  that  bachelor  philosopher  with  the  impartial 
literalness  of  conscientious  motherhood.  Regard- 
less of  the  weather,  the  little  Josiah  was  carried 
from  his  warm  bed  and  plunged  thrice  into  water 
right  from  the  well ;  his  feet,  as  Locke  absurdly 
prescribes,  were  kept  as  wet  as  the  weather  would 
permit;  and  in  other  ways  more  sensible  he  was 
hardened  to  the  strenuous  life  of  those  rude  days. 
As  the  times  were  not  advantageous  to  the  settling 
of  the  child's  considerable  estate,  the  young  Quincy 
lived  with  his  grandfather  Phillips  and  in  temporary 
dependence  upon  him.  But  the  old  gentleman  was 
not  only  a  Puritan,  he  was  an  irascible  one;  little 
Josiah  was  noisy  and  high  of  spirit.  Therefore,  at 
the  age  of  six,  his  mother  had  no  alternative  but  to 
send  the  youngster  off  to  Andover,  to  the  Academy 
founded  by  his  grandfather,  to  be  schooled  by  that 
stern  Calvinist,  the  Rev.  Eliphalet  Pearson.  There 
for  the  first  four  years  this  little  martyr  sat  on  a 
hard  bench  four  hours  in  the  morning,  four  hours 
in  the  afternoon,  conning  Cheever's  Accidence,  of 
which,  of  course,  not  one  sentence  was  intelligible. 
His  seat-mate  was  Capt.  Cutts,  a  man  of  thirty,  who 


Josiah   Quincy,  New  England  Aristocrat     67 


was  trying  thus  late  to  repair  his  faulty  education; 
and  the  only  relief,  in  school,  from  the  sombre  com- 
pany of  Cheever,  the  Rev.  Eliphalet  and  the  mature 
Captain,  was  in  the  learning  of  Watts'  Hymns, — 
to  us  a  somewhat  fearful  form  of  recreation. 

By  his  tenth  year,  however,  young  Josiah,  after 
floundering  through  Cheever's  Accidence  twenty 
times,  reached  the  firmer  ground  of  Caesar  and 
Nepos.  At  fourteen  he  went  to  Harvard,  and 
found  no  difficulty  in  finishing  his  course  there  with 
such  credit  as  to  be  honored  at  Commencement  with 
the  English  Oration.  After  graduation,  his  moth- 
er, from  whom  he  had  been  separated  twelve  years, 
took  a  house  in  Court  Street,  and  Josiah  began  the 
study  of  the  law  with  Col.  William  Tudor,  a  man 
of  large  practice.  He  was  determined,  however, 
that  politics  should  be  his  career,  and  deliberately 
prepared  himself  for  them,  as  politics  should  be  pre- 
pared for,  in  the  manner  of  one  entering  a  pro- 
fession. 

I  need  not  dwell  upon  the  provincialism  of  the 
Boston  of  those  stagecoach  days.  As  compared  with 
our  own,  the  life  of  that  time  seems  narrow  and 
rather  stupefying.  But  it  was  simple,  it  was  whole- 
some, it  furnished  a  good  soil  in  which  to  ripen 
strong,  earnest  men  of  afifairs,  men  who  in  politics 
and  in  business  would  build  soundly  and  solidly. 
It  was  an  atmosphere  that  conspired,  however, 
against  Josiah  Quincy.  He  was  so  fortunately  born 
that  he  had  no  need  to  earn  a  name  for  himself ; 
his  money  prospects  were  so  good  that  the  law  was 
hardly  more  than  an  avocation;  his  position  was  so 


68  New  England  Conscience 

secure  that  no  friend  thought  it  necessary  to  push 
him  forward ;  there  existed  then,  as  now,  a 
popular  prejudice  against  rich  men  seeking  office; 
a  certain  austerity  made  his  entrance  into  politics 
a  difficult  one.  It  was  therefore  much  to  the  credit 
of  Quincy  that  he  should  have  overcome  these  dis- 
advantages, as  real  as  would  have  been  those  of 
poverty  and  obscurity.  But  first,  he  was  to  see  the 
world  and  to  get  married.  The  journey,  carefully 
planned,  ended  almost  as  soon  as  begun;  the  mar- 
riage, as  is  the  way  of  matrimony,  was  not  planned, 
but  lasted  most  happily  for  fifty-three  years.  It 
followed  a  real  instance  of  love  at  first  sight;  and 
the  young  lady,  Eliza  Susan  Morton,  of  New  York, 
in  a  lifetime  of  devotion  and  congenial  companion- 
ship, proved  the  wisdom  of  his  sudden  choice. 
Nothing  was  said  to  his  mother,  however,  of  his 
amorous  state,  and  he  started  for  New  York  (where, 
by  the  way,  letters  of  introduction  to  her  relatives 
permitted  him  to  see  much  of  Miss  Morton),  and 
journeyed  thence  to  Philadelphia,  where  he  visited 
his  cousin  John  Adams  (then  Secretary  of  State), 
and  saw  more  or  less  of  President  Washington, 
by  whom  he  was  not  particularly  impressed.  From 
Philadelphia,  he  planned  to  travel  on  horseback  to 
Charleston,  South  Carolina,  and  to  sail  from  that 
port  for  the  grand  tour  of  Europe;  but  he  was 
summoned  back  by  a  mercantile  failure  involving  a 
portion  of  his  fortune.  He  never  thereafter  went, 
or  seemed  to  care  to  go,  abroad.  In  due  time  he 
announced  his  engagement,  married  Miss  Morton, 
and  they  came  to  live  with  his  mother,  who  had 


Josiah   Quincy,  New  England  Aristocrat     69 

removed  to  a  beautiful  house  on  Pearl  Street.  With 
his  marriage,  Josiah  Quincy's  long  public  career 
began. 

I  have  gone  into  this  extended  account  of  the 
Quincy  family  history,  not  that  I  might, — as  is  too 
often  the  case  with  biographers, — magnify  the  de- 
scendant through  the  aureole  of  his  forebears,  but 
because,  in  presenting  any  historical  portrait,  one 
must  take  heed  to  the  background ;  and  with  this 
second  Mayor  of  Boston,  his  background  of  family 
tradition  was  fundamental  to  his  career.  When  one 
looks  at  Greenough's  statue  of  him,  one  must  see 
that  rather  formal  figure,  not  set  against  the  City 
Hall  of  to-day;  but  backed  instead  by  the  glow 
of  the  Revolution,  by  the  atmosphere  of  aris- 
tocratic habit  which  the  Quincys  brought  from 
England,  by  the  golden  mist  of  family  tradi- 
tion surrounding  the  early  vision  of  every  son 
of  the  house.  At  heart  Josiah  Quincy  was  not  a 
democrat,  he  was  a  patrician.  As  his  father  had 
solemnly  prayed,  the  mantle  of  liberty  had  fallen 
upon  him ;  but  it  was  the  liberty  of  England  before 
the  Reform  Bill,  the  liberty  of  gentlemen ;  it  was 
not  at  all  the  freedom  for  which  America  was  then 
groping,  and  which  it  has  yet  by  no  means  at- 
tained. From  his  first  entrance  into  politics  Quincy 
was  a  Federalist ;  and  he  remained  a  Federalist  to 
his  dying  day,  when  a  whole  generation  had  forgot- 
ten what  manner  of  belief  this  Federalism  was. 
For,  like  Boston,  Federalism  was  not  so  much  a 
party  as  a  state  of  mind ;  like  most  states  of  mind  it 
was  curiously  contradictory;  and  in  Massachusetts 


70  New  England  Conscience 

it  was  more  strangely  contradictory  than  anywhere 
else.  Of  that  Massachusetts  Federalism — at  least 
after  the  defection  of  John  Quincy  Adams — Josiah 
Quincy  was  high-priest. 

It  is  a  difficult  thing  to  define;  but,  as  I  under- 
stand it,  this,  roughly  speaking,  was  the  Federalism 
of  Josiah  Quincy's  time : — It  believed  in  a  centraliz- 
ed government;  yet  placed  New  England  above  the 
nation,  and  Massachusetts  above  the  rest  of  New 
England.  Having  Washington  as  its  leader,  Fed- 
eralism regarded  the  Revolution  as  peculiarly  its 
own;  yet,  as  Lowell  truly  says,  the  Federalists  were 
the  only  Tory  party  we  have  ever  had.  Assuming 
the  attitude  of  defenders  of  the  Constitution,  they 
nevertheless  found  themselves  forced,  by  Jefferson's 
policy,  into  a  position  bordering  closely  upon  nulli- 
fication. Violently  in  disagreement  with  the  South, 
it  was  yet  the  Federalists  who  declared,  through 
Quincy,  that  secession  is  sometimes  right.  Believ- 
ing in  commercial  expansion,  they  yet  opposed  the 
territorial  expansion  involved  in  the  purchase  of 
Louisiana.  Haters  of  England  because  of  her  past 
tyrannies  on  land  and  of  her  present  tyrannies  on 
the  sea,  they  were  driven,  through  their  distrust 
of  France,  into  a  sort  of  advocacy  of  Great  Britain. 
As  the  party  of  foreign  commerce,  they  loved  peace ; 
yet  they  found  themselves  urging  an  unwilling 
Congress  to  build  up  a  navy  to  be  used  for  war. 
Every  step  leading  to  the  War  of  1812,  that  war 
itself,  they  opposed ;  and  the  lame  and  impotent  con- 
clusion of  the  struggle  proved  them  to  have  been 
right;  yet  that  mad  enterprise  firmly  established  the 


Josiah   Quincy,  New  England  Aristocrat     71 


party  of  Jefferson  and  absolutely  killed  theirs.  In 
1789,  Federalism,  with  Washington  and  Hamilton 
as  its  leaders,  was  a  supreme  power;  by  18 1 5,  it  had 
become  a  disembodied  ghost,  killed,  primarily,  by 
the  French  Revolution.  For  the  party  battles  of 
those  twenty-five  years  were  fought,  not  on  Ameri- 
can, but  on  foreign  soil ;  the  real  contest  between 
the  party  of  Hamilton  and  the  party  of  Jefferson 
was  between  the  limited,  but  true,  democratic  ideals 
of  England,  and  the  illimitable  but  wholly  illusory 
liberie,  egalite,  fraternite  of  France.  Given  time 
and  strong  leaders,  Federalism  might  perhaps  have 
won ;  but  in  its  desperation  it  made  the  fatal  mis- 
take of  allying  itself  with  Burr;  it  committed  the 
further  folly  of  calling,  in  time  of  war,  the  Hart- 
ford Convention ; — and  its  doom  was  sealed.  Most 
of  the  principles  of  Federalism  lived  as  long  as  Mr. 
Quincy,  and  are  living  to-day;  but  the  party  of 
Federalism  died  absolutely  fifty  years  earlier  than 
he. 

As  representing,  then,  the  Federalists,  a  hopeless 
minority  in  the  national  Congress ;  as  a  Bostonian 
of  the  Bostonians — even  at  that  day  regarded  by 
the  rest  of  the  country  with  a  curious  mingling  of 
deference  and  contempt; — as  the  advocate  of  prin- 
ciples rather  English  than  American,  Josiah  Quincy, 
in  the  very  nature  of  things,  could  not  reach  that 
prominence  in  the  councils  of  the  nation  which  his 
mental  and  oratorical  powers  merited  and  which, 
there  is  every  reason  to  believe,  he  coveted. 

Elected  to  the  national  House  of  Representatives 
in  1804,  he  immediately  began  a  special  preparation 


72  New  England  Conscience 


for  his  duties  by  reading  and  digesting  all  the 
political  documents  at  his  command,  and  by  taking 
up  (and  this  seems  to  hint  of  diplomatic  ambitions) 
the  study  of  French.  In  Congress,  Mr.  Quincy 
early  made  himself  a  leader  of  the  minority  and 
delivered  a  number  of  notable  and  truly  eloquent 
speeches  against  the  policies  of  Jefferson.  As  an 
official  protector  of  the  maritime  interests  of  New 
England,  he  urged  the  proper  defense  of  the  coasts, 
a  policy  to  which  the  Republicans  were  deeply  op- 
posed; as  the  champion  of  those  same  cruelly  abused 
interests,  he  denounced  the  chimerical  schemes  of 
Jefferson  for  bringing  old  England  to  terms  through 
the  ruin  of  New  England's  commerce.  Always 
fearful  of  the  growing  power  and  pretension  of  the 
South,  Mr.  Quincy  opposed  every  measure  threaten- 
ing to  extend  slavery  or  giving  representative  power 
based  on  servile  population.  Above  all,  he  opposed 
that  supreme  measure  for  increasing,  as  he  believed, 
the  power  of  the  slave  states,  the  purchase  of  Louisi- 
ana. Historic  is  his  great  speech  against  the  Louisi- 
ana Purchase,  for  in  it  he  enunciated  thus  early 
that  doctrine  of  States'  rights,  which  was  to  vex 
the  country  for  years,  and  to  lead  finally  to  Civil 
War.  In  arguing  that  the  administration  had  no 
right  to  purchase  Louisiana  without  first  obtaining 
the  consent  of  each  one  of  the  thirteen  original 
states,  Mr.  Quincy  said :  "It  is  my  deliberate  opin- 
ion, that,  if  this  bill  passes,  the  bonds  of  this  Union 
are  virtually  dissolved;  that  the  States  which  com- 
pose it  are  free  from  their  moral  obligations,  and 
that,  as  it  will  be  the  right  of  all,  so  it  will  be  the 


Josiah   Quincy,  New  England  Aristocrat     73 

duty  of  some,  to  prepare  definitely  for  a  separation  ; 
amicably  if  they  can,  violently  if  they  must." 

The  time  of  his  Congressional  service  was  dis- 
tinctly a  war  period ;  and  in  the  face  of  impending 
war,  the  minority  party  is  always  in  a  difficult  situa- 
tion, so  loud  is  the  demand  upon  it  to  bury  principle 
under  so-called  patriotism.  Mr.  Quincy  did  not 
escape  this  dilemma  of  the  minority  leader,  and  it  is 
too  long  after  the  events  intelligently  to  weigh  his 
conduct.  On  the  whole  it  seems  to  have  been  wise ; 
and  certainly  it  was  always  honorable.  Opposing 
in  every  way  the  approaching  conflict  with  Great 
Britain,  which  he  rightly  called  a  war  of  party, 
not  of  the  nation,  he  yet  alienated  many  of  his 
Federalist  friends  by  voting,  when  war  seemed  in- 
evitable, for  troops  and  munitions.  Determined  not 
to  lend  himself,  after  it  broke  out,  even  to  the  dis- 
cussion of  a  conflict  so  obnoxious  to  his  party,  he 
nevertheless  found  himself  impelled  by  events  to 
speak;  and  with  especial  vigor  he  denounced  and 
ridiculed  that  most  fatuous  of  projects,  the  pro- 
posed invasion  of  Canada.  This  was  almost  his  last 
speech  in  Congress;  for,  disgusted  with  the  trend 
of  politics,  wearied  with  the  futile  labors  of  a  minor- 
ity leader,  Mr.  Quincy  had  absolutely  refused  re- 
nomination.  He  therefore  retired  from  Congress 
on  March  4,  18 13,  after  eight  years  of  service,  leav- 
ing Washington,  as  he  declared,  "with  the  feeling 
of  a  man  quitting  Tadmor  in  the  Wilderness,  'where 
creeping  things  had  possession  of  the  palaces,  and 
foxes  looked  out  of  the  windows.'  " 

Retiring   to   Massachusetts,   he    watched,    with 


74  New  England  Conscience 


gloomy  eyes,  the  progress  of  the  war,  uttering  in 
public  speech  and  print  warnings  against  the  course 
of  Madison's  administration.  Ten  years  before, 
just  prior  to  his  election  to  Congress,  he  had  sat  in 
the  Senate  of  Massachusetts.  In  1813,  he  was  again 
elected  to  that  bod}^  and  served  honorably  until 
1820.  But  his  boldness  of  speech  and  his  independ- 
ence of  mind,  especially  his  opposition  to  his  party's 
policy  in  regard  to  the  separation  of  Maine  from 
Massachusetts,  so  put  him  out  of  favor  with  the 
party  leaders  that  he  was  flatly  dropped  by  them  in 
1820.  So  incensed  were  the  voters  of  the  party, 
however,  by  this  action  of  its  managers,  that  they 
took  steps  for  A^Tr.  Quincy  to  represent  them  in 
the  lower  house  of  the  Legislature,  putting  him  at 
the  head  of  the  ticket  and  electing  him  by  a  large 
majority.  In  the  following  year  he  was  chosen 
Speaker  of  the  State  House  of  Representatives,  an 
office  which  he  was  peculiarly  fitted  to  adorn,  and  the 
year  after  was  re-elected  to  the  position.  Before  that 
session  ended,  however,  he  resigned  from  the  Legis- 
lature to  accept  the  office  of  Judge  of  the  Municipal 
Court. 

From  the  National  Congress  to  a  municipal 
judgeship  may  seem  a  retrogression  in  public  office ; 
but  it  did  not  so  appear  to  Mr.  Quincy,  who  not 
only  made  any  position  which  he  chose  to  accept  im- 
portant, but  who  sought  this  variety  of  official  ex- 
perience as  a  physician  or  a  lawyer  seeks  opportuni- 
ties of  widening  his  professional  view.  He  realized 
that  he  was  taking  part  in  the  greatest  political  ex- 
periment which  the  world  has  ever  seen ;  he  appreci- 


Josiah   Quincy,  New  England  Aristocrat     75 

ated  that  his  generation  would  have  exceptional 
power  in  the  right  shaping  of  that  experiment ;  and 
he  desired  to  see  the  working  of  it  and  to  influence 
the  trend  of  it  upon  as  many  sides  as  possible. 

Assisting,  then,  in  both  state  and  nation,  in  this 
early  and  pregnant  translation  of  English  into 
American  forms  and  ideals  of  democracy,  Josiah 
Quincy  was  next  to  take  a  vital  part  in  that  equally 
important  process,  the  evolution  of  the  New  Eng- 
land town  meeting  into  the  administration  of  a 
modern  city. 

In  the  long,  varied  and  publicly  important  career 
of  Mr.  Quincy,  nothing  else  he  did  was  of  so  much 
consequence  to  his  nation,  nothing  else  he  did  has 
had  such  an  influence  upon  the  development  of 
America,  as  the  six  years  which  he  spent  in  the  May- 
or's chair.  The  population  of  Boston,  early  in  the 
nineteenth  century,  approached  40,000,  and  had 
quite  outgrown  the  town-meeting  system  of  ad- 
ministration. A  nursing-mother  to  democracy  as 
that  system  had  been,  Boston  had  become  too  big 
for  it  and  needed  new  sources  of  political  nourish- 
ment. So  alive,  however,  were  our  forefathers  to 
the  importance  of  the  town-meeting  as  an  educator 
for  citizenship,  that  for  a  number  of  years  they  put 
up  with  its  inconveniences  and  even  dangers,  rather 
than  enter  upon  untried  paths.  Mr.  Quincy  him- 
self opposed  the  city  charter  with  much  vigor,  even 
to  the  time  of  its  adoption ;  but  when  the  town 
was  finally  forced  by  the  cumbersomeness  of  the  old 
order  to  change  its  administration,  it  was  plain  to 
everyone,  it  was  borne  in  upon  Mr.  Quincy  him- 


76  New  England  Conscience 

self,  that  he  alone  of  her  citizens  was  fitted  by 
position,  temperament  and  knowledge  of  the  situa- 
tion to  undertake  the  difficult  duties  of  transform- 
ing Boston  from  a  country  town  into  a  metropolis. 
By  a  political  combination,  however,  into  which  it 
is  not  necessary  to  enter,  Mi.  Quincy,  after  having 
consented  to  run  for  Mayor,  found  it  expedient  to 
withdraw  his  name  in  favor  of  his  kinsman  John 
Phillips,  an  honorable  gentleman,  who  as  first  May- 
or of  Boston,  performed  in  a  dignified,  though  rath- 
er perfunctory  way,  the  more  obvious  duties  of  his 
executive  position. 

Mr.  Phillips'  health  being  impaired,  he  refused 
to  stand  for  re-election ;  and,  the  complications  of 
the  previous  year  having  been  unravelled,  Mr. 
Quincy  was  elected,  without  opposition,  second 
Mayor  of  the  city  of  Boston.  And  this  was  the 
situation  which  he  found  confronting  him.  He 
found  Boston, — for  those  days  a  considerable  city, 
— still  being  administered  under  village  conditions. 
He  found  all  the  communal  services,  such  as  street- 
cleaning,  entirely  inadequate,  because  of  the  impossi- 
bility, under  a  town  government,  of  securing  the 
money  needed  for  those  services,  and  of  administer- 
ing them  in  a  centralized  and  economical  way.  He 
found, — for  the  reason  that  the  business  of  the 
city  had  long  outgrown  the  grasp  of  the  town  meet- 
ing,— much  authority  alienated  from  the  citizens  and 
vested  in  committees  having  undefined,  and  there- 
fore wholly  uncertain,  powers.  And  he  found  a 
large  proportion  of  the  inhabitants,  in  spite  of  the 
logic  of  the  situation,  still  fiercely  insistent  upon 


Josiah   Quincy,  New  England  Aristocrat     77 


town-meeting  methods  and  quite  unwilling  to  trans- 
fer their  allegiance  to  the  officers  created  by  the 
city  charter.  Himself  but  very  recently  an  advocate 
of  the  town-meeting,  a  believer,  theoretically,  at 
least,  that  Vox  populi  vox  Dei,  Mr.  Quincy  had  yet 
a  mind  so  clear,  a  training  for  politics  so  thorough, 
a  view  into  the  future  so  keen,  that  he  grasped  the 
needs  of  the  situation  and  saw  matters  so  far  gone 
into  disorder  and  towards  disintegration  that  there 
could  be  but  one  remedy, — a  temporary,  benevolent 
dictatorship.  And  fortunate  for  Boston  that  just 
at  this  point  in  her  history  she  had  at  hand  such  a 
dictator  as  Josiah  Quincy!  Absolutely  incor- 
ruptible, perfectly  fearless,  ipdefatigable,  fond  of 
minutiae,  with  a  sternness  of  bearing  and  yet  grace 
of  manner  enabling  him  to  overrule  much  opposi- 
tion, he  had  also — what  was  essential  at  that  junc- 
ture— the  spirit  and  attitude  of  the  English  aristo- 
crat, of  the  ruler  of  men  by  the  divine  right  of 
birth.  Thus  equipped,  Mr.  Quincy  entered,  in 
1823,  upon  his  new  and  arduous  duties;  and  in  the 
six  years  of  his  incumbency  he  so  wonderfully  trans- 
formed this  city  as  justly  to  deserve  the  title  of 
"The  Great  Mayor." 

In  the  first  place — and  this,  as  his  keen  mind  per- 
ceived, was  essential  to  his  success — he  made  him- 
self an  autocrat  by  assuming  the  headship  of  prac- 
tically every  committee  of  the  administration.  In 
his  "Municipal  History  of  Boston,"  he  is  careful 
to  pay  tribute  to  the  zeal  and  wisdom  of  his  associ- 
ates on  the  Board  of  Aldermen  and  City  Council : 
but   it   is  clear   in   every  act   and   speech   of    Mr. 


78  New  England  Conscience 

Qulncy's  that  those  bodies  were  but  instruments 
serving  to  carry  out  his  masterful  and  almost  sov- 
ereign will. 

The  first  year  of  Mr.  Quincy's  incumbency  was 
given  mainly  to  questions  of  municipal  housekeep- 
ing: to  problems  of  cleaning  the  streets  and  yards, 
and  of  removing  garbage  and  other  nuisances.  Such 
labor  might  be  a  fruitful  theme,  perhaps,  for  the 
poetic  prose  of  Carlyle  or  the  prosaic  poetry  of  Walt 
Whitman ;  but  it  is  not  the  kind  of  work  which 
makes  great  reputations.  It  is  neither  intellectually 
stimulating  nor  aesthetically  refreshing.  To  every 
detail  of  the  problem,  however,  Mr.  Quincy  gave 
the  vigor  of  his  unusual  mind  and  the  zeal  of  his 
extraordinary  physical  activitv.  How  little  the  town 
had  cared  for  such  matters  is  shown  by  the  fact 
that,  until  this  first  term  of  Mr.  Quincy's,  there 
had  never  been  expended,  in  any  year,  over  $1000 
for  the  cleaning  of  streets,  the  work  of  making  them 
decent  having  been  left  to  suburban  farmers  who 
cleaned  when  they  felt  like  it,  carried  away  only 
such  dirt  as  seemed  to  them  valuable,  and  used  in  the 
removal  of  this  and  the  more  noxious  filth  of  the 
town  open  ox-teams  whose  slow  progress  through 
the  streets  was  a  saturnalia  of  nastiness.  More- 
over, upon  Mr.  Quincy's  inauguration,  the  responsi- 
bility for  this  part  of  the  municipal  housekeeping 
was  divided  among  three  independent  boards,  with 
uncertain  and  overlapping  powers.  By  the  end  of 
his  first  year,  however,  the  new  Mayor  had  brought 
it  about  that  he,  with  his  Board  of  Aldermen,  should 
have  supreme  control  of  the  streets,  and  that  the 


Josiah   Quincy,  New  England  Aristocrat     79 


Board  of  Health  should  have  equal  power  over  the 
household  wastes;  had  banished  the  farmers  and 
their  oxen ;  had  given  the  city  its  first  comprehensive 
cleaning  with  brooms,  resulting  in  the  collection  of 
3000  tons  of  dirt;  had  made  the  care  of  the  streets 
a  definite  and  systematic  work  of  the  city  perform- 
ed by  its  own  men  and  wagons ;  had  decreed  regula- 
tions looking  to  the  regular  and  decent  removal  of 
garbage ;  and  had  forced  the  farmers  to  wholesale 
and  proper  methods  in  the  cleansing  of  the  drains 
and  cesspools. 

Thus  fortunately  were  the  conflicting  authorities 
over  the  city's  physical  health  disposed  of;  but  not 
so  easily  could  he  handle  that  old  and  firmly  en- 
trenched board  which  supervised  the  city's  moral 
health, — the  Overseers  of  the  Poor.  To  them  Dr. 
Hale's  definition  of  a  board  as  a  long,  narrow  body 
which  never  comes  to  a  point,  may  well  be  applied. 
One  of  the  hardest  and  most  prolonged  struggles 
of  Mr.  Quincy's  six  years  in  office  was  with  those 
Overseers, — estimable  but  unenlightened  gentlemen 
who  clung  equally  to  personal  authority  and  to 
antiquated  methods  of  procedure.  Under  their 
regime,  the  city's  poor,  whether  such  by  age  and 
infirmity  or  by  vice  and  crime,  whether  old  men 
or  boys,  whether  men  or  women,  whether  sick  or 
well,  were  herded  together  in  an  outgrown  build- 
ing upon  Leverett  Street.  To  supersede  this,  a 
more  enlightened  committee,  in  which  Mr.  Quincy 
had  been  active,  had  proposed  the  purchase  of  sixty- 
three  acres  of  land  in  what  was  then  the  country 
region  of  South   Boston,  and  the  building  thereon 


8o  New  England  Conscience 


of  a  house  of  industry,  a  house  of  correction  and 
an  institution  for  juvenile  offenders,  leaving  the  in- 
firm, respectable  poor  in  the  almshouse  upon  Lever- 
ett  Street.  It  is  not  necessary  to  enter  into  the 
details  of  this  long-drawn  controversy  in  which 
Mr.  Quincy  finally  triumphed ;  but  it  is  a  struggle 
worthy  of  the  pen  of  Dickens;  and  by  following  it 
one  appreciates,  as  in  no  other  way,  the  enormous 
strides  which  sociology  in  the  last  eighty  years  has 
made. 

One  gets  a  view,  too,  of  the  change  which  has 
come  over  our  cities  through  the  increase  of  popula- 
tion and  the  influx  of  foreign  immigration,  when 
one  reads  that  the  entire  police  force  at  Mr.  Quincy's 
command  embraced  twenty-four  constables  and 
eight  night  watchmen,  of  whom  no  more  than  eigh- 
teen were  ever  on  duty  at  one  time.  Boston  was 
then,  indeed,  in  spite  of  its  size,  a  village  of  Puri- 
tans, every  householder  constituting  himself  an  of- 
ficer of  the  law  in  his  house,  in  his  shop,  and  even 
in  the  streets  themselves.  Nevertheless,  a  city  with 
such  a  wide  commercial  horizon  as  Boston's  could 
not  be  without  at  least  some  imported  wickedness; 
and  for  the  ill-disposed  there  had  grown  up  a  nest 
of  evil  houses  with  which  the  constabulary  declared 
themselves  powerless  to  cope.  Mr.  Quincy  took 
the  matter  into  his  own  hands  and  by  the  skillful 
resurrection  of  old  statutes  against  fiddlers  and  tip- 
plers, suppressed  the  musicians  who  played  for  the 
lewd  dancing,  closed  the  saloons  communicating  with 
the  evil  houses,  and  thus  brought  to  a  quick  ending 
this  flaunting  of  vice  in  the  face  of  decency,  this 


Josiah   Quincy,  New  England  Aristocrat     8 1 


threat  to  the  lives  of  innocent  passers-by.  On  the 
other  hand,  when  a  formidable  body  of  so-called 
good  citizens  tried  to  suppress  other  disreputable 
places  by  mob  violence,  Mr.  Quincy,  hastily  organ- 
izing the  truckmen  of  the  city — strong-handed  and 
stout-hearted  men — placed  himself  at  their  head 
and,  at  no  little  danger  to  himself,  dispersed  the 
rioters.  Notwithstanding  these  incidents,  the  Mayor 
saw  no  reason  to  increase  the  constabulary  during 
his  term  of  office;  but  he  made  it  more  efficient  by 
putting  it  under  the  single  and  responsible  control 
of  a  City  Marshal  appointed  by  himself. 

The  next  reform  undertaken  by  Mayor  Quincy 
was  the  reorganization  of  the  Fire  Department. 
Impossible  as  it  is  now  to  imagine  it,  that  city  of 
nearly  50,000  inhabitants,  with  its  buildings  mainly 
of  wood,  was  protected — or  rather  should  one  say 
unprotected — against  loss  by  fire  by  fourteen  old 
tubs  without  hose,  worked  by  hand  brakes,  and  kept 
filled  by  lines  of  volunteer  citizens,  who  were  ex- 
pected, upon  an  alarm  of  fire,  to  rush  to  the  scene 
with  leathern  buckets  for  water  and  a  canvas  bag 
for  loot.  The  fire  companies  were  social  rather 
than  municipal  organizations;  they  were  separately 
governed  by  "fire  wards"  chosen  by  popular  vote; 
their  spirit  was  of  rivalry  as  to  which  should  get 
closest  to  the  fire  rather  than  as  to  which  should 
save  the  most  property;  and  as  to  the  volunteer 
citizens,  with  their  buckets  and  their  bags,  their 
running  hither  and  thither,  their  dropping  out  of 
line  whenever  tired,  their  inclination  rather  to  see 
the  fun  than  to  do  the  work, — one  may  faintly  pic- 


82  New  England  Conscience 


ture  what  disastrous  pandemonium  they  created  at 
a  fire  in  those  days. 

New  York  and  Philadelphia  had  for  some  time 
outgrown  such  provincialism,  and  had  established 
a  paid  fire  service  controlled  by  a  single  responsible 
head,  and  equipped  with  engines  of  some  power, 
using  long  lines  of  hose ;  and  Mr.  Quincy,  after 
having  studied  the  methods  of  those  cities,  proposed 
a  similar  system  for  Boston.  So  sure  were  the  fire 
companies,  however,  of  their  hold  upon  the  populace 
that,  by  asking  for  more  pay  and  privileges,  they 
brought  their  power  to  an  open  test.  The  Mayor 
refusing  to  grant  their  demands,  the  entire  force, 
upon  a  threatened  day,  resigned.  Mr.  Quincy  im- 
mediately accepted  their  resignations,  appointed 
loyal  citizens  in  their  places,  and  in  a  few  hours 
created  a  new  department.  Having  won  this  first 
victory,  he  followed  up  his  advantage  by  submitting 
his  plan  for  a  new  fire-service  to  the  citizens,  who, 
after  much  violent  haranguing  and  many  appeals  to 
the  spirit  of  ancient  liberties,  accepted  it  by  a  close 
vote,  and  the  new  order  was  at  once  inaugurated. 
Modern,  convenient  engine  houses  were  built,  the 
latest  improved  fire  engines  were  ordered  from  New 
York,  lengths  of  hose  sufficient  to  do  away  with  the 
absurd  lines  of  citizens  bought,  and  throughout  the 
city  were  established  huge  cisterns  for  emergency 
water-supplies,  cisterns  which  were  picturesquely  de- 
nounced as  "inverted  monuments  to  Quincy's  ex- 
travagance." 

The  schools,  also,  engaged  Mr,  Quincy's  earnest 
attention,  and  his  son,  in  that  admirable  memoir  of 


Josiah   Quincy,  New  England  Aristocrat     83 


him  which  is  a  model  for  biographers,  declares  that, 
during  his  father's  administration,  they  were  in 
better  condition  than  they  ever  before  had  been.  This, 
however,  is  but  faint  praise;  for  we  know,  from 
Horace  Mann's  reports,  what  general  inefficiency 
characterized  the  public  education  of  that  time. 
From  motives  of  economy  Mr.  Quincy  took  one  dis- 
tinctly backward  step  in  urging,  and  with  his  ac- 
customed master}'  of  the  situation  bringing  about, 
the  abolition  of  the  Girls'  High  School.  This  school 
had  been  earnestly  desired  by  the  people,  but,  in 
Mr.  Quincy's  opinion,  was  far  too  great  a  burden 
upon  the  city,  especially  as  it  was  attended  mainly 
by  the  daughters  of  men,  as  he  declared,  amply  able 
to  pay  for  the  private  tuition  of  their  daughters. 

The  monumental  work  of  Mayor  Quincy's  six 
administrations  was,  of  course,  the  great  market- 
house  usually  called  by  his  name.  The  result  of  years 
of  work,  of  finesse,  of  bold  foresight  met  with  every 
sort  of  denunciation  and  evil  insinuation,  is  best 
summarized  in  Mr.  Quincy's  own  words:  "A 
granite  market  house,"  he  writes,  "two  stories  high, 
five  hundred  and  thirty-five  feet  long,  fifty  feet 
wide,  covering  twenty-seven  thousand  feet  of  land, 
including  every  essential  accommodation,  was  erect- 
ed, at  a  cost  of  one  hundred  and  fifty  thousand 
dollars.  Six  new  streets  were  opened  and  a  seventh 
greatly  enlarged,  including  one  hundred  and  sixty- 
seven  thousand  square  feet  of  land ;  and  flats,  docks, 
and  wharf-rights  obtained,  of  the  extent  of  one 
hundred  and  forty-two  thousand  square  feet.  All 
this  was  accomplished  in  the  centre  of  a  populous 


84  New  England  Conscience 


city,  not  only  without  any  tax,  debt,  or  burden 
upon  its  pecuniary  resources, — notwithstanding,  in 
the  course  of  the  operations,  funds  to  the  amount 
of  upwards  of  eleven  hundred  thousand  dollars  had 
been  employed, — but  with  large  permanent  additions 
to  its  real  and  productive  property." 

But,  as  Mr.  Quincy  foresaw  from  the  beginning 
and  predicted  in  terms  in  his  first  inaugural,  such 
dictatorship  as  his  could  not  long  be  brooked  by 
a  population  already  uneasy  under  the  changes  from 
the  old  order  and  the  increased  taxation.  Elected 
in  the  first  place  by  a  vote  practically  unanimous, 
the  Mayor  each  year  saw,  as  he  expected,  the  opposi- 
tion polling  a  large  and  larger  vote,  until,  at  the 
end  of  his  sixth  term,  it  became  plain  that  he  could 
not  be  re-elected,  and  he  refused,  therefore,  to  be 
a  candidate.  The  reaction  earnestly  fostered  by  the 
old  fire  companies,  disgruntled  boards  and  other 
malcontents  had  come,  and  the  city,  suffering  one 
of  those  revulsions  inevitable  under  popular  govern- 
ment, went  from  bad  to  worse,  until  relief  was 
sought  in  the  Legislature.  Unfortunately  it  has 
been  sought  there  again  and  again  until  Boston 
has  almost  ceased  to  govern  herself,  the  citizens 
weakly  inviting  the  rule  of  men  from  other  parts  of 
Massachusetts  rather  than  to  take  the  trouble  of 
reassuming  the  burden  of  self-government. 

Scarcely  had  he  left  the  mayoralty  than  Mr. 
Quincy  was  elected  to  the  presidency  of  Harvard 
University,  in  succession  to  Dr.  Kirkland.  While 
wholly  honorable  to  himself  and  beneficial  to  the 
University,  this  part  of  Mr.  Quincy's  career  was 


Josiah   Quincy,  New  England  Aristocrat     85 

probably  the  least  important  to  history  of  all  his 
public  service.  The  modern  conception  of  a  college 
president  as  a  great  educational  administrator,  as  a 
high  leader  of  thought,  as  a  moulder  of  civic  and 
national  life,  had  not  then  arisen.  Mr.  Quincy 's 
genius,  therefore,  which  would  have  eminently  fit- 
ted him  for  such  a  role,  could  not  at  that  time  be 
of  avail,  for  the  conservatism  of  the  community 
would  not  have  permitted  him  thus  to  exercise  it. 
On  the  other  hand,  he  had  not  that  peculiar  genius 
as  a  leader  of  young  men  which  distinguished  such 
presidents  as  Mark  Hopkins  and  Eliphalet  Nott, 
men  who  made  men  by  a  sort  of  infusion  into  their 
pupils  of  their  own  great  spirits.  Rather  did  Mr. 
Quincy  follow  the  traditional  conception  of  a  college 
presidency  as  a  safe  haven  after  the  turmoils  of 
public  or  ecclesiastical  life,  a  haven  in  which  a  man 
of  eminence  might  ride  out,  in  dignified  anchorage, 
his  declining  years.  It  is  true  that  his  successor, 
President  Walker,  called  him  the  great  organizer 
of  the  University;  it  is  true  that  he  did  much  to 
place  the  disordered  finances  of  the  University  upon 
a  sound  and  healthy  basis ;  it  is  true  that  he  advocat- 
ed a  certain  freedom  in  study  which  has  over-de- 
veloped itself  into  the  present  free  elective  system; 
it  is  true  that  he  wrote  a  useful,  if  quite  uninspired, 
history  of  the  college;  and  it  is  eminently  true  that 
as  a  figure-head  in  the  many  semi-public  functions 
in  which  Harvard  properly  takes  a  leading  part, 
Mr.  Quincy's  patrician  grace  of  form  and  bearing, 
and  his  dignity  of  manner  made  him  honorably 
conspicuous.     Moreover,  he  was  active  in  building 


86  New  England  Conscience 


Gore  Hall  and  in  establishing  the  Observatory  and 
the  School  of  Law.  Those,  indeed,  are  his  three 
chief  monuments  at  the  University;  and  it  were, 
perhaps,  ungrateful  to  ask  larger  memorials  of  his 
sixteen  years  in  the  Harvard  presidency. 

In  1845,  being  then  in  his  74th  year,  Mr. 
Quincy  retired  from  Harvard  and  prepared  to  en- 
joy in  honored  leisure  his  probably  short  remain- 
ing span  of  life.  As  it  proved,  however,  he  had 
still  nineteen  more  years  of  usefulness;  and  these 
were  beautifully  spent  by  him  in  literary  and 
agricultural  pursuits;  in  occasional  public  appear- 
ances; especially  in  the  calm  role  of  a  philosopher 
wise  through  age,  serene  through  experience,  to 
whom  men  gladly  turn  for  counsel  in  perplexity, 
for  admonition  in  their  hot-headed  haste.  Spend- 
ing his  winters  in  the  comfortable  Park  Street 
house  and  his  summers  on  his  wide  acres  at  Quincy, 
he  walked  slowly  and  always  erect,  clear-minded, 
simny-tempered,  down  the  autumn  slope  of  life, 
death  meeting  him,  in  his  ninety-third  year,  as  the 
rich  glow  of  the  sunset  meets  and  enwraps  the  trav- 
eler whom  we  on  the  hill-top  of  middle  life  see  one 
moment  sharply  limned  against  the  sky  and  whom, 
the  next  moment,  we  lose  in  the  deepening  glory  of 
the  all-sheltering  night. 

Some  men  are  made  great  by  the  positions  which 
they  occupy;  the  positions  which  Josiah  Quincy 
occupied  were  made  great  by  him.  It  is  easy  to  say 
that  by  joining  the  political  majority  his  might  have 
been  a  supreme  national  instead  of  a  leading  Massa- 
chusetts name;  but  the  finest  service  that  a  man 


Josiah   Quincy,  New  England  Aristocrat     87 


can  rentier  in  a  republic  is  to  be  a  true,  an  in- 
corruptible, an  unswerving  leader  of  the  minoritj'. 
Genuine  criticism,  honest  opposition,  courageous 
denunciation  of  the  majority  are  the  sine  qua  non 
of  democratic  government ;  and  I  do  not  hesitate 
to  say  that  Quincy  did  ten  times  the  service  to  his 
country  in  leading  the  opposition  than  he  could  have 
performed  had  he  had  all  the  hosts  of  Jefferson  at 
his  beck  and  call. 

It  may  be  said  again  that  his  talents  were  too 
high  for  such  places  as  a  municipal  judgeship  and  the 
mayoralty  of  a  fledgling  city.  No  man's  talents 
are  too  high  for  the  doing  of  any  honorable  work 
for  his  city  or  his  State ;  and  unless  men  of  the 
stamp  of  Josiah  Quincy  learn  this  lesson,  the  Re- 
public which  should  be  the  anxious  care  of  its  best 
sons  will  fall  a  prey  to  its  corruptest  ofifspring. 
Again  it  may  be  said — and  truly  said — that  in  as- 
suming autocratic  power  as  Mayor,  Mr.  Quincy 
gave  a  wrong  impetus  to  municipal  government,  a 
trend  from  which  our  cities,  with  their  bosses  and 
their  dependence  upon  State  Legislatures,  are  to- 
day sadly  suffering.  But  Mr.  Quincy  could  not 
foresee  this;  he  could  only  do,  as  he  did,  the  work 
at  hand  in  the  best  way  at  that  time  possible.  The 
situation  confronting  him  was  so  bad  that  only  a 
dictatorship  could  remedy  it;  and  he  sacrificed  his 
own  peace,  he  sacrificed  his  popularity,  in  order  to 
perform  his  duty. 

Duty,  courage,  probity, — these  were  the  moral 
springs  of  his  career.  Were  he  standing  on  the 
floor  of  Congress  bearding  the  vituperative  Henry 


88  New  England  Conscience 


Clay,  or  were  he  listening  to  the  plea  of  some 
police  court  outcast,  his  single  aim  was  to  achieve 
the  right.  Were  he  exposing,  in  bitter  words,  the 
true  motives  of  the  fiery  slave-holders,  or  were  he 
calmly  disdaining  their  challenges  to  duel,  his  moral 
courage  never  flinched.  In  all  his  positions  of  trust, 
in  all  the  large  opportunities  for  good  and  for  evil 
that  came  to  him,  his  private  interests  never  once 
eclipsed  or  even  shadowed  his  clear  vision  of  the 
public  good.  Of  a  noble  race,  he  kept  untarnished 
its  great  name.  Heir  to  a  conspicuous  patriotism,  he 
cherished  and  increased  that  splendid  heritage.  In 
his  life  he  ennobled  living;  in  his  death  he  made 
dying  beautiful ;  in  his  varied  work  he  demonstrated 
the  high  possibilities  of  intelligent  and  devoted 
citizenship ;  in  the  way  that  work  was  done,  he  set 
before  the  men  of  his  and  of  every  generation  a 
standard  which  some  have  achieved  and  to  which 
others  may  attain;  but  which  few  or  none  can  sur- 
pass. 


The  Shays  Rebellion  89 


V 

The  Shays  Rebellion 

THE  final  downfall  of  Shays',  or,  as  it  is 
more  euphoniously  termed,  the  Shays 
Rebellion,  was  almost  coincident  with 
the  graduation  from  Harvard  of  John 
Quincy  Adams.  His  mother,  writing 
from  London  upon  both  events  says:  "I  have  never 
once  regretted  the  resolutions  (my  son)  took  of 
quitting  Europe,  and  placing  himself  upon  the  thea- 
tre of  his  own  country;  where,  if  his  life  is  spared, 
I  presume  he  will  neither  be  an  idle  or  even  useless 
spectator.  Heaven  grant  that  he  may  not  have 
more  distressing  scenes  before  him,  and  a  gloomier 
stage  to  tread  than  those  on  which  his  father  has 
acted  for  twelve  years  past.  But  the  curtain  rises 
before  him;  and  instead  of  Peace  waving  her  olive 
branch,  or  Liberty  seated  in  a  triumphal  car,  or 
Commerce,  Agriculture,  and  Plenty  pouring  forth 
their  stores.  Sedition  hisses.  Treason  roars.  Rebel- 
lion gnashes  her  teeth,  Mercy  suspends  the  justly 
merited  blow,  but  Justice  strikes  the  guilty  victims." 
Thus  grandiloquently,  but  truly,  does  this  liter- 
ary lady  sum  up  this  momentous  episode  in  Ameri- 
can history,  the  incidents  of  which  were  trivial, 
sometimes  even  farcical ;  but  the  causes  and  effects 
of  which  are  of  deep  significance  in  the  development 
of  the  United  States. 

Habitual  novel  readers  are  seldom  disconcerted 


New  England  Conscience 


by  the  mishaps  and  sorrows  of  the  successive  chap- 
ters, because  they  feel  certain  that  in  the  end  the 
lovers  will  be  united  and  live  happily  forever  after. 
But  those  whose  experience  of  life  goes  beyond  the 
blissful  last-chapter  know  that  its  genuine  sorrows, 
— and  also  its  enduring  joys — are  at  that  point  only 
just  beginning.  So  it  is  with  the  story  of  the  Amer- 
ican Revolution  as  told  in  school-books, — many  of 
which,  by  the  way,  are  as  ingeniously  fictitious  as  is 
"The  Prisoner  of  Zenda."  The  difficulties  and 
dangers  of  that  great  struggle  for  independence  are 
dwelt  upon  with  a  detail  out  of  all  historical  propor- 
tion ;  but  when  at  last,  worn  out  by  the  genius  and 
persistency  of  Washington,  the  strength  of  the  Brit- 
ish army  surrenders  at  Yorktown,  the  infant  mind 
is  given  to  infer  that,  united  in  political  matrimony, 
the  states  are  now  to  live  happily  forevermore.  As 
a  matter  of  fact,  however,  the  difficulties,  the  dan- 
gers, the  political  embarrassments  of  the  Revolu- 
tion were  really  less  than  were  those  of  the  years 
following  the  surrender  of  Cornwallis  and  preced- 
ing the  final  and  general  adoption  of  the  Constitu- 
tion. The  real  test  of  our  moral  strength  as  a  peo- 
ple came  then;  and  that  state  which,  on  the  whole, 
had  to  bear  the  severest  strain,  that  state  wherein 
a  large  proportion — possibly  a  majority — of  the  in- 
habitants were  for  many  months  ready  to  forswear 
democracy,  that  state  whose  disaiiEection  would  have 
meant,  probably,  the  dissolution  of  the  union,  was 
the  Commonwealth  of  Massachusetts.  It  is  cus- 
tomary, I  think,  to  regard  the  Shays  Rebellion  as  a 
petty  revolt  of  the  camp-following  of  the  disbanded 


The  Shays  Rebellion  91 

army,  stirred  up  by  paid  agents  of  Great  Britain. 
Another  view  regards  it  as  an  attempt  of  ambitious 
politicians  to  seize  the  government,  an  attempt,  in 
the  swelling  periods  of  the  historian  of  Worcester, 
"of  loftier  Catilines  behind  their  humbler  instru- 
ments." But  the  British  agents  seem  to  have  been 
as  mythical  as  the  "British  gold"  of  a  later  period; 
and  if  there  were  Catilines,  none  of  the  many  Cice- 
ros  of  that  time  arose  to  denounce  them.  Instead, 
it  seems  to  me,  this  Rebellion  represented  a  wide- 
spread and  well-grounded  disaffection  of  respecta- 
ble citizens,  of  tried  soldiers,  of  serious  persons  with 
genuine  grievances.  Therefore,  had  its  leaders 
equalled  its  rank  and  file,  the  state  might  easily 
have  been  overthrown.  Fortunately  for  history,  the 
Catilines  so  darkly  hinted  at  did  not  appear.  Though 
Shays'  name  is  forever  linked  with  this  rebellion,  it 
was  because  he  and  not  a  stronger  man  headed  it, 
that  law  and  order  triumphed  in  the  end. 

The  close  of  the  Revolution  found  the  people  of 
the  United  States  united  only  in  name;  it  found 
them  dissevered  from  Great  Britain  but  not  yet 
cemented  among  themselves;  it  found  them,  as  was 
to  be  expected,  demoralized  by  that  social  "Katzen- 
jammer"  which  always  follows  war.  The  wheels 
of  normal  industry  had  been  stopped  by  war;  the 
extraordinary  industries  and  activities  of  war  had, 
in  turn,  been  stopped  by  peace;  there  was  thus  a 
double  dislocation  of  trade  and  industry.  The 
farmers,  having  tasted  the  life  of  city  and  of  camp, 
were  finding  the  drudgery  of  the  fields  irksome  if 
not  distasteful;  the  young  men,  after  the  excitement 


92  New  England  Conscience 

of  battle  and  the  idleness  of  camps,  were  rebelling 
against  the  uneventful  earning  of  their  daily  bread ; 
the  soldiers  in  general,  having  long  been  supported 
by  a  grateful  people,  were  finding  it  hard  to  forage 
for  themselves;  above  all,  both  soldiers  and  civilians, 
having  learned,  under  the  teaching  of  war, — that 
best  friend  of  debtors, — ^how  easy  it  is  to  borrow, 
and  to  postpone  one's  debts,  were  developing  very 
hazy  notions  as  to  financial  obligations  and  were 
coming  to  believe  that  freedom  carries  with  it  the 
right  to  free  borrowing  and  unlimited  expenditure. 
But  the  immediate  close  of  the  Revolution  did 
not,  as  I  think  is  generally  believed,  find  the  coun- 
try poor.  Importation  had,  it  is  true,  been  largely 
suspended ;  but  that  fact  had  but  conserved  the 
specie  and  built  up  crude  domestic  industries ;  the 
fisheries  had  been  greatly  interfered  with,  so  that, 
for  example,  the  whaling  fleet  of  Nantucket  had 
been  reduced  from  150  to  only  19  sail;  but  it  is 
fair  to  suppose  that  some  part  at  least  of  this  loss 
had  been  made  good  by  privateering.  The  main 
reliance  of  the  covmtry  had  been,  however,  upon 
agriculture;  and  the  war,  far  from  stopping  that, 
had  given  it  an  unusual  market  in  the  necessities 
of  the  army  and  the  fleet.  Moreover,  by  the  exer- 
tions of  our  foreign  representatives,  a  good  deal  of 
hard  cash  had  come  into  the  country  from  France, 
from  Spain  and  from  Holland,  money  for  whose 
payment  the  country,  it  is  true,  stood  pledged,  but 
the  reckoning  day  for  which  had  not  yet  come.  In 
this  way,  and  through  the  French  allies,  with  their 
large  purchases  of  provisions  and  supplies,   always 


The  Shays  Rebellion  93 


paid  for  in  specie,  there  had  been  put  into  circula- 
tion probably  a  greater  amount  of  gold  and  silver 
than  the  country  ever  before  had  seen.  But  this 
highly  prosperous  condition  of  the  early  1780s 
served  but  to  make  more  unbearable  the  distresses 
which  so  quickly  and  so  inevitably  followed.  I  say 
inevitably,  because  at  least  three  economic  forces 
were  at  work  to  plunge  the  people,  with  extraordi- 
nary speed,  from  seeming  riches  into  a  poverty  so 
harsh  that  it  is  scarcely  an  exaggeration  to  say  that 
for  months  Massachusetts  possessed  scarcely  a  dollar 
of  good  money  and  hardly  a  dollar's  worth  of  credit. 
These  three  forces  were:  first,  the  tremendous  im- 
portations from  abroad,  which  naturally  followed 
peace,  which  had  to  be  paid  for  in  specie,  and 
which,  as  they  were  only  to  a  slight  degree  ofFset  by 
exportations,  quickly  drained  the  country  of  its  gold 
and  silver ;  second,  the  proposed  attempts  to  keep 
up  a  show  of  prosperity  by  issuing  paper  money  and 
by  making  commodities  a  legal  tender ;  third,  by  the 
fact  that  the  enormous  debts  contracted  by  the  Con- 
tinental Congress,  by  the  states,  and  by  individuals, 
during  the  war,  were  rapidly  coming  due  and  were 
clamoring  for  payment. 

More,  perhaps,  than  any  other  state,  Massa- 
chusetts suffered  by  this  economic  crisis.  Generous 
of  men  and  supplies  for  the  war,  she  had  made  a 
real  effort  to  meet  her  obligations.  On  the  other 
hand,  through  her  coast  cities,  the  chief  American 
ports  of  entry,  her  specie,  in  the  fever  of  importa- 
tion after  the  peace,  had  been  the  first  to  flee.  And 
to  meet  this  double  drain  she  had  almost  no  im- 


94  New  England  Conscience 

mediate  resources.  Her  manufactures,  feeble,  but  a 
former  main  source  of  revenue,  had  been  almost 
prostrated ;  her  fisheries  languished ;  worst  of  all, 
her  shipping  was  still  paralyzed  by  the  commercial 
tyranny  of  England.  For  that  country,  beaten  upon 
land,  still  ruled  the  sea,  and  by  decreeing  that  only 
British  vessels  should  bring  goods  to  herself  and 
to  her  colonies,  had  virtually  closed  all  lucrative 
ports  to  the  ships  of  the  United  States.  As  to  the 
agriculture  of  Massachusetts,  that  was  of  little  avail; 
for  then,  as  now,  her  rocky  hillsides  yielded  better 
men  than  crops. 

During  the  heat  of  conflict,  no  promise  had  seem- 
ed too  large  to  make,  no  stake  too  great  to  play  for 
liberty ;  and  while  all  were  busy  with  war  none  had 
claimed  payment ;  perhaps,  in  the  generous  fervor  of 
the  struggle,  had  not  expected  ever  to  enforce  his 
claims.  But  by  the  year  1784  sentiment  had  dis- 
appeared ;  these  pledges  which  a  desperate  need  had 
forced  were  pressing  for  redemption ;  and  the  nation, 
the  state,  the  individual  had  almost  nothing  with 
which  to  meet  them.  Under  the  articles  of  con- 
federation, the  central  government  had  no  resources 
save  such  as  might  be  granted  by  the  individual 
states ;  those  states  had,  to  be  sure,  the  power  of  taxa- 
tion ;  but  the  right  to  tax  a  people  desperately  poor, 
is  but  the  power  to  incite  rebellion.  So  denuded 
of  every  form  of  money  had  Massachusetts,  by  1785, 
become ;  so  demoralized  were  her  people  by  a  war 
which  was  in  itself  a  protest  against  taxation,  that 
it  became  the  rule  not  to  pay  one's  taxes,  and  he 
who  did  so  was  looked  upon  as  an  eccentric  idealist, 


The  Shays  Rebellion  95 

comparable  perhaps  to  the  modern  citizen  who  freely 
and  honestly  declares  his  personal  estate. 

With  a  debt  to  the  Congress  of  over  five  millions, 
with  a  debt  on  her  own  account  of  over  four  mil- 
lions, and  owing  her  own  soldiers  seven  hundred 
thousand  more,  Massachusetts  would  have  been  fool- 
ish to  enforce  the  taxation  necessary  to  meet  these 
obligations.  At  that  time  the  only  form  of  tax  was 
a  direct  one ;  to  have  collected  it  would  have  meant 
a  squeezing  of  fifty  dollars  out  of  every  man,  woman 
and  child  in  the  state,  it  would  have  meant,  accord- 
ing to  a  trustworthy  contemporary,  a  confiscation 
of  at  least  one  third  of  the  total  income  of  the  state's 
inhabitants.  "How  absurd,"  writes  a  newspaper 
correspondent  signing  himself  "Farmer,"  "are  the 
tax  collector's  calls  for  twenty  dollars  at  a  time 
when  that  is  more  money  than  we  ever  see."  What 
made  this  impossible  taxation  doubly  galling  was  the 
fact  that  it  represented,  in  the  graphic  Yankee  slang, 
"Payment  for  a  dead  horse."  Most  of  the  state  and 
national  debt  was  due  for  the  expenses  of  the  war, 
an  event  now  past  and  the  fruits  of  which  seemed 
already  dubious.  That,  then,  the  authorities  of 
Massachusetts  made  only  feeble  attempts  to  collect 
the  revenue,  that  there  was  agitation  for  the  aboli- 
tion of  the  direct  tax,  that  there  was  clamor  for  the 
immediate  sale  of  the  public  lands  in  the  province  of 
Maine  (a  project  more  easily  proposed  than  carried 
out),  that  a  large  party  demanded  repudiation  of 
the  public  debts,  and  that  a  still  more  formidable 
body  called  for  that  perennial  quack  medicine,  pa- 
per money,  was,  under  the  circumstances,  only  to  be 


96  New  England  Conscience 


expected.  And  all  this  agitation  over  the  taxes  took 
on  a  personal  aspect  from  the  fact  that  among  the 
largest  creditors  of  the  government  were,  on  the  one 
hand,  the  veterans  of  the  war,  holding  notes  for  their 
wages;  and,  on  the  other,  speculators  who  had  ex- 
ploited the  soldiers'  poverty  by  buying  up  these  notes 
at  a  ruinous  discount.  These  speculators,  many 
persons  claimed,  the  government  had  no  obligation, 
and  no  right,  to  pay. 

But,  while  the  state  authorities  and  the  Congress 
would  not  and  could  not  force  the  people  to  pay 
their  taxes,  private  debts  were  quite  another  matter. 
Private  debts  had  behind  them  real  flesh-and-blood, 
impatient  creditors,  a  host  of  lawyers  eager  to  bring 
action,  courts  to  sustain  those  actions,  laws  of  at- 
tachment and  sale  to  satisfy  them,  and  jails  open 
to  punish  the  debtor  who  would  not  or  whose  prop- 
erty could  not  liquidate  the  debt.  The  horrors 
of  debtors'  prisons  were  then  unspeakable;  yet  into 
them  were  thrown,  by  due  process  of  law,  men  who 
had  fought  for  the  country,  men  who  stood  highest 
in  their  several  communities,  men  whose  very  devo- 
tion and  self-sacrifice,  whose  very  trust  in  the  state, 
had  brought  them  to  this  wretched  pass.  In  the 
face  of  many  such  instances,  with  the  courts  crowd- 
ed with  suits — in  1784,  for  example,  Worcester 
County,  with  a  population  of  50,000,  saw  2,000  ac- 
tions for  debt,  and  a  single  attorney  brought  lOO 
actions  in  but  a  single  court — what  wonder  that  law- 
yers were  denounced  as  tools  of  tyranny  and  the 
courts  before  which  they  plead  as  monstrous  agents 
for  devouring  the  poor?      Moreover,  the  traditions 


The  Shays  Rebellion  97 


of  England  were  still  potent  in  her  late  colonies, 
distinctions  of  "classes"  and  "masses"  were  marked, 
and  there  seemed  good  reason  to  fear  that  the  gentry 
would  claim  public  office  as  their  prerogative  and 
would  use  the  power  thus  gained  to  build  up  a 
landed  aristocrac_v.  This  fear  was  magnified,  in 
Massachusetts,  bj'  the  fact  that  the  seat  of  govern- 
ment was  at  Boston,  the  centre  of  wealth  and  of 
colonial  power,  but  not  the  geographical  centre  of 
the  state.  This  unsuitability  of  Boston  for  the  Cap- 
ital, Springfield  and  Worcester  were  quick  to  point 
out  and  eager  to  enlarge  upon. 

Loud  and  louder  grew  the  cry  of  complaint  from 
those  who,  in  imitation  of  the  French,  were  pleased 
to  style  themselves  the  "People."  Is  it  for  poverty 
and  hardship  such  as  this  that  we  fought  during  all 
those  bitter  years?  Have  we  freed  ourselves  from 
a  tyrannical  king  only  to  find  ourselves  bound  hand 
and  foot  by  pressing  debts  and  an  impossible  taxa- 
tion? Are  we  simply  running  from  the  distant 
oppression  of  England  into  the  immediate  bondage 
of  lawyers  with  high  fees  and  courts  with  power 
to  sell  a  man's  all  and  to  imprison  him  in  a  pest- 
hole if  the  debt  be  not  then  discharged?  If  this  be 
liberty,  give  us  license,  and  that  we  may  enjoy 
license,  away  with  courts  and  law! 

Almost  equal  to  that  against  the  law,  was  the 
outcry  against  luxury.  The  newspapers  of  the  da} , 
precursors  of  our  more  modern  "Transcript,"  were 
full  of  letters  denouncing  the  wearing  of  foreign 
gew-gaws  and  the  eating  of  strange,  superfluous 
dishes.     No  modern  Puritan  scoring  the  vanities  of 


98  New  England  Conscience 

the  Metropolitan  Opera  House,  is  half  so  fiery  as 
were  those  old  fellows,  who  signed  themselves 
Fublicus,  Senex,  and  the  like,  and  who  attributed 
all  the  sorrows  of  the  nation  to  miss's  ribands  and 
madam's  satin  gown.  Moved  by  these  denuncia- 
tions, the  ladies  of  Boston,  as  usual,  started  a  club 
for  the  discouragement  of  luxurious  living;  but, 
as  a  contemporary  writer  goes  out  of  his  way  to 
remark,  "they  produced  by  so  doing  little  allevia- 
tion of  the  general  distress." 

While,  however,  the  good  ladies  were  of  their 
own  choice  donning  homespun,  the  lawyers,  with- 
out their  own  consent,  were  being  summarily  dealt 
with.  The  people  attacked  them  at  the  most  obvi- 
ous point  by  depriving  them  of  office,  by  driving 
them  from  that  public  life  in  which,  theretofore, 
they  had  been  the  principal  actors.  It  is  bad  enough, 
the  rural,  and  especially  the  western  rural  voters 
said,  to  have  the  General  Court  meet  in  Boston, 
that  purse-proud  seat  of  gentility,  to  which  it  is  so 
long  and  so  expensive  a  journey  for  our  representa- 
tives to  go,  and  where  they  are  subject  to  the  wiles 
and  temptations  of  a  corrupt  metropolis;  but  at 
least  we  can  exclude  these  greedy  lawyers  from  the 
halls  of  legislation,  sending  there  instead  our  in- 
corruptible selves.  So  the  General  Court  of  1785 
contained  scarcely  a  lawyer,  being  made  up  almost 
wholly  of  new  and  untried  men.  This  action,  how- 
ever, gave  the  wicked  attorneys  but  the  more  leisure, 
and  made  them  but  the  more  eager,  to  secure  fees. 

There  is  reason  to  suspect  that  Hancock — shrewd 
politician  that  he  was, — foresaw  the  coming  storm; 


The  Shays  Rebellion  99 

for  in  1785  he  resigned  the  governorship.  His  plea 
was  ill-health ;  and  it  is  true  that  his  contemporaries 
describe  him  (though  he  was  less  than  fifty  years 
old)  as  a  feeble,  wasted  old  man;  but  had  the 
times  been  less  troubled  and  the  outlook  for  de- 
mocracy more  rosy,  it  seems  unlikely  that  he  would 
have  resigned  an  office  that  pointed  so  directly 
towards  the  goal  of  his  ambition,  the  soon-to-be- 
created  Presidency.  At  the  April  election  following, 
the  people  were  unable  to  choose  a  successor ;  there- 
fore the  selection  fell  into  the  General  Court,  and 
from  the  list  sent  up  to  the  Senate  by  the  House  the 
former  body  chose,  wisely  as  it  would  afterwards 
appear,  James  Bowdoin,  But  it  was  a  selection  far 
from  agreeable  to  a  large  number  of  persons  in 
Massachusetts,  for  Bowdoin  was  regarded  as  dis- 
tinctly of  the  aristocratic  party,  quite  out  of  sym- 
pathy with  the  people's  grievances.  Moreover,  his 
only  daughter  had  married  Sir  John  Temple,  a 
Boston  boy  by  birth,  but  a  British  aristocrat  by  in- 
heritance. During  the  first  year  of  Bowdoin's  ser- 
vice, the  situation,  both  political  and  financial,  was 
growing  ever  more  alarming ;  nevertheless  no  overt 
act  was  done,  and  in  the  spring  of  1786  the  governor 
was  reelected  by  a  considerable  popular  majority. 
In  August  of  that  year,  however,  the  widespread 
discontent  at  last  took  shape  in  various  conven- 
tions which,  representing  in  some  instances  as  many 
as  fifty  towns,  met  at  various  places  in  Worcester, 
Middlesex  and  Bristol  counties.  These  assemblages 
were  orderly  and  their  members  were,  in  the  main, 
sober    and    thoughtful    persons.      Conducted    with 


lOO  New  England  Conscience 

parliamentary  form  and  keeping  in  communication 
with  one  another,  after  the  manner  of  the  earlier 
committees  of  correspondence,  these  conventions 
first  solemnly  declared  themselves  constitutional  and 
then,  with  equal  gravity,  made  demands  upon  the 
General  Court  which,  if  granted,  would  have  de- 
stroyed the  constitution  of  the  state. 

The  grievances  set  forth  by  these  gatherings  vary 
in  character  and  in  number;  but  the  main  objects 
of  their  attack  were  the  fees  and  practices  of  the 
lawyers,  the  Courts  of  common  pleas  and  general 
sessions  of  the  peace,  the  burdensome  taxes  and 
methods  of  taxation,  the  excessive  salaries  of  govern- 
ment officials  (especially  the  £iioo  received  by  the 
governor  himself),  the  meeting  of  the  General  Court 
at  Boston,  the  tendency  towards  an  office-holding 
aristocracy,  and,  worst  of  all,  the  scarcity  of  money 
and  the  collapse  of  credit.  The  remedies  proposed 
for  the  money-famine  would  be  funny  had  they 
not  been  so  serious  and  did  not  most  of  them  still 
survive,  a  standing  menace  to  our  industrial  life. 
The  favorite  panacea  was  a  paper  money  with  a 
fixed  ratio  of  depreciation  by  which  its  value  would 
be  gradually  less  until,  at  the  end  of  ten  or  twenty 
years,  its  worth  would  wholly  vanish.  This,  as 
anyone  without  common  sense  can  easily  see,  would 
relieve  all  debtors  of  their  obligations  without  need 
of  any  exertion  upon  their  part. 

Much  as  these  conventions  might  elaborate  or 
sub-divide  their  grievances,  there  were  fundamental- 
ly, however,  only  two:  the  excessive  taxation,  and 
the  scarcity  of  monev.    Both  these  evils  were  but 


The  Shays  Rebellion  lOi 


the  natural  result  of  such  a  war  as  the  American 
Revolution,  and  their  only  cure  was  to  be  found 
in  patience,  frugality,  industry  and  mutual  forbear- 
ance. To  preach  these  admirable  virtues,  however, 
to  men  on  the  verge  of  starvation  and  threatened 
with  a  debtor's  prison,  was  to  ask  self-denial  of  the 
famished  tiger.  Here  were  the  hard  facts:  taxes 
which  they  could  not  meet,  debts  which  they  could 
not  pay,  jails  to  rot  in  if  they  did  not  pay.  But 
taxes,  debts,  jails  would  be  powerless  to  reach  them 
without  the  action  of  the  courts.  Ergo,  stop  the 
Courts;  at  least  until  the  Legislature  should  have 
had  opportunity  to  consider  and  to  redress  their 
wrongs.  So,  in  that  same  August,  while  the  sev- 
eral conventions  were  putting  their  grievances  upon 
paper,  1500  men  at  Northampton  put  theirs  into 
action  by  assembling  and  overawing  the  courts  into 
an    immediate   adjournment. 

This  was  a  step  so  subversive  of  the  state  that 
Governor  Bowdoin  at  once  issued  a  stirring  proc- 
lamation calling  upon  all  officers  and  good  citizens 
to  protect  the  judges,  and  commanding  the  Gen- 
eral Court  to  convene  in  special  session  on  Septem- 
ber 27th. 

Pending  this  coming  together  of  the  Legislature 
three  other  sessions  of  the  courts  were  to  be  holden, 
the  first  at  Worcester,  on  September  5.  To  pro- 
tect this  sitting,  the  militia  of  the  County  were 
ordered  out ;  but  some  flatly  refused  ;  others  excused 
themselves,  like  the  wedding  guests  of  the  parable; 
and  those  who  responded  were  but  half-hearted  in 
their  work.     Therefore  the  "Regulators,"  as  they 


I02  New  England  Conscience 

HOW  called  themselves,  led  by  Adam  Wheeler  of 
Hubbardston,  had  no  difficulty  in  virtually  taking 
possession  of  the  town.  To  the  number  of  about 
300,  with  sprigs  of  evergreen  in  their  hats  and  with 
a  pine  tree  for  a  standard,  they  surrounded  the 
court-house  and,  when  the  judges  appeared  to  open 
court,  confronted  them  at  the  door  with  bayonets. 
General  Ward,  the  chief  justice,  met  them  like  a 
soldier,  harangued  them  upon  their  wickedness, 
would  answer  no  man  till  he  knew  his  name  and 
residence,  and  metaphorically  bared  his  bosom  to 
the  steel.  Nevertheless,  he  and  his  associates  final- 
ly retired  to  a  private  house  and,  after  a  day  or  two 
of  fruitless  parleying,  adjourned  the  Court  to  a 
more  propitious  season. 

No  shots  were  exchanged  between  the  rioters  and 
the  representatives  of  order:  but  there  was  much 
bandying  of  words.  The  sheriff  of  Worcester,  find- 
ing one  of  their  grievances  to  be  his  alleged  high 
fees,  told  them,  with  much  spirit,  that  if  this  were 
their  complaint  they  need  trouble  themselves  no 
longer,  for  he  would  gladly  hang  them  all  for  noth- 
ing. 

The  success  of  the  "regulators"  at  Worcester  oc- 
casioned the  keenest  anxiety  over  the  next  sessions 
of  the  Courts,  which  were  to  be  held,  all  on  Sep- 
tember 12,  at  Great  Barrington,  Taunton,  and 
Concord.  At  Taunton  the  dignity  of  the  state  was 
maintained  by  the  vigor  of  General  Cobb,  who, 
practically  against  the  Governor's  orders,  paraded 
the  militia  and  saved  the  court  from  insult,  though 
the  judges  deemed  it  prudent  to  adjourn.    At  Great 


The  Shays  Rebellion  103 

Barrington  and  Concord,  however,  what  a  travesty 
of  official  dignity  was  seen!  At  the  former  town, 
the  militia  general,  seeing  the  rioters  assembled  in 
force,  proposed,  like  a  true  officer  of  opera  bouffe. 
that  the  question  of  the  sitting  of  the  courts  be  put 
to  popular  vote,  those  in  favor  to  gather  on  one 
side  of  the  road  and  those  opposed  on  the  other. 
This  remarkable  referendum  resulted  as  was  to  be 
expected :  the  Courts  showed  but  a  beggarly  hand- 
ful of  adherents,  and  the  wise  general  retired  with 
a  whole  skin  and  doubtless  delighted  with  his  pow- 
ers of  strategy. 

Concord  made  hardly  a  better  showing.  The 
Governor,  distracted  by  a  multitude  of  counsels,  was 
on  the  whole  disposed  to  display  the  full  power  of 
the  state;  but  a  self-constituted  committee  of  24 
towns  dissuaded  him,  assuring  him  that  they  would 
carry  out  instead  a  conciliatory  policy  sure  to  suc- 
ceed. So  the  orders  for  the  assembling  of  the  militia 
were  countermanded  and,  on  the  morning  when 
the  court  was  to  convene,  the  committee  began  its 
noble  work  of  moral  suasion.  First  it  met  at  the 
meeting-house,  and,  after  prayer  by  Dr.  Ripley, 
declared  itself,  quite  unnecessarily,  a  constitutional 
assembly.  It  then  appointed  two  sub-committees: 
one  to  wait  upon  the  insurgents  who,  under  the 
leadership  of  Job  Shattuck,  a  loud-mouthed  dema- 
gogue, were  parading  about  the  town ;  the  other 
to  wait  upon  the  judges,  gathered  somewhat  timor- 
ously in  Jones'  tavern,  to  tell  them  what  the  com- 
mittee was  going  to  do  for  them, — for  which  in- 
formation   the    judges    declared    themselves    truly 


I04  ISlew  England  Conscience 


grateful. 

Although  the  first  sub-committee  labored  till 
quarter  past  three  o'clock,  all  they  could  get  from 
Shattuck  and  his  crew  were  two  manifestos :  the  first 
that  the  "voice  of  the  people"  forbade  the  Courts 
to  meet;  the  second  that  they  might  meet  and  ad- 
journ, provided  they  went  not  near  the  court-house; 
replies  which,  it  is  stated,  "pained  the  committee." 
Meanwhile  the  leaders  of  the  mob  were  making 
various  braggart  threats  that  all  not  joining  them 
would  be  run  out  of  town  at  the  point  of  the  bayonet 
or,  as  one  authority  has  it,  would  be  "put  to  the 
sword."  "The  time  has  come,"  shouted  Shattuck, 
"to  sweep  away  all  debts!"  "Oh  yes.  Job,"  drawled 
a  voice  from  the  crowd,  "We  know  all  about  them 
two  farms  you  can't  never  pay  for." 

Meanwhile  other  insurgents  had  come  in  from 
Worcester  County  and,  all  eloquent  with  New 
England  rum,  paraded  before  Jones'  tavern,  utter- 
ing threats  and  curses.  Finally  Dr.  Bartlett,  of  the 
sub-committee  which  in  the  morning  had  waited 
upon  the  judges  to  tell  them  how  much  was  to  be 
done  for  them,  was  deputed  to  go  out  and  to  inform 
the  rioters,  with  due  deference,  that  the  court  had 
decided  not  to  sit. 

This  wretched  fiasco  had  several  results:  it 
roused  the  citizens  of  Boston  to  the  holding  of  meet- 
ings in  support  of  the  government,  and  to  the  send- 
ing of  an  address,  truly  step-motherly  in  its  scorn 
and  admonition,  to  the  other  towns.  It  also  showed 
the  insurgents  that,  having  gone  thus  far,  they  must, 
to  save  their  necks,  go  farther,  and  control,  if  they 


The  Shays  Rebellion  105 


could,  the  Supreme  Court;  for  therein  lay,  of 
course,  the  power  to  indict  them.  Therefore,  in  late 
September,  the  "regulators"  assembled  in  force  at 
Springfield,  where  the  Supreme  Court  was  to  sit; 
and,  while  they  did  not  prevent  it  from  convening, 
they  virtually  controlled  its  action  and  secured  from 
it  an  early  adjournment.  Here  at  Springfield  met 
for  the  first  time  the  tw^o  chief  leaders;  on  the  one 
side,  General  Shepard,  whose  vigor  at  a  later  date 
was  to  kill  the  insurrection,  and  on  the  other,  Daniel 
Shays,  whose  name  has  gained  a  bad  eminence  which 
his  ability  did  not  really  earn.  Shays  had  been  a 
captain  in  the  Revolution,  and  seems  to  have  been 
a  good  recruiting  officer.  He  was,  however,  quite 
incompetent  for  leadership,  and  spent,  apparently, 
more  time  in  excusing  himself  than  in  trying  to  jus- 
tify his  cause.  He  was  far  more  respectable,  how- 
ever, than  were  Shattuck,  Parsons  and  most  of  the 
other  leaders  whose  names  have  sunk  into  deserved 
oblivion. 

Meanwhile,  the  General  Court  had  come  together 
at  Boston.  Stiffened  by  the  pronounced  loyalty  of 
that  city,  by  the  comparative  vigor  of  the  Governor, 
and  by  fear  for  its  own  existence,  it  proceeded  to 
enact  some  really  wise  and  dignified  legislation. 

It  passed  a  riot  act,  involving  confiscation  of  prop- 
erty, whipping  and  imprisonment;  and  on  the  other 
hand  an  act  of  indemnity  to  those  who  would  take 
the  oath  of  allegiance  before  the  end  of  the  year; 
a  judiciary  act  extending  the  powers  of  justices  of 
the  peace,  thereby  reducing  the  cost  of  suits  of  law ; 
an  impost  and   excise  tariff  intended   to   relieve  in 


io6  New  England  Conscience 


some  measure  the  burden  of  direct  taxation;  and 
a  measure  for  the  sale  by  lottery  of  the  public  lands 
in  Maine.  After  a  long  conflict  between  the  demo- 
cratic house  and  the  aristocratic  senate,  it  also  tem- 
porarily suspended  the  writ  of  Habeas  Corpus.  It 
did  not,  much  to  its  credit,  give  in  to  the  popular 
clamor  for  paper  money,  although  it  passed  a  tem- 
porary tender  act;  and,  best  of  all,  it  issued  an 
Address  to  the  People,  in  which  the  political  and 
economic  situation  was  explained  and  justified  in  a 
really  masterly  manner.  This  address  was  to  be 
read  in  all  the  churches  on  Thanksgiving  Day.  In 
short,  by  word  and  by  deed  the  legislature  supported 
the  Governor  and  the  militia  in  all  that  they  had 
done. 

No  sooner,  however,  had  the  General  Court  ad- 
journed, just  before  Thanksgiving,  than  it  became 
evident  that  both  its  strength  as  shown  in  its  coer- 
cive laws  and  its  supposed  weakness  as  shown  in  the 
bill  of  amnesty,  had  but  served  more  fully  to  in- 
flame the  people.  Conventions  of  the  towns  imme- 
diately met,  framing  new  grievances  and  accusing 
the  legislature  of  lack  of  understanding  of  and  sym- 
pathy with  the  populace;  the  courts  were  again 
stopped,  or  forced  to  adjourn ;  and  scarcely  a  rioter 
condescended  to  avail  himself  of  the  privilege  of 
pardon.  It  is  little  exaggeration  to  say  that, 
throughout  December,  the  State,  west  of  Middlesex 
county,  was  practically  in  the  possession  of  the  mob. 
The  insurrection  in  Middlesex,  however,  had  been 
absolutely  broken  up  by  the  high  sheriff  who,  sup- 


The  Shays  Rebellion  107 

ported  by  a  Boston  troop  of  light  horse  under  Col. 
Hichborn  and  another  from  Groton  under  Col. 
Wood,  had  captured  Shattuck  and  the  other  leaders 
and  had  clapped  them  into  Suffolk  jail, 

Sha\'s,  meanwhile,  had  taken  up  his  headquarters 
at  Rutland,  12  miles  from  Worcester,  in  some  bar- 
racks of  the  Revolution  (probably  those  in  which  the 
prisoners  from  Burgoyne's  army  were  so  long  con- 
fined, and  the  well  for  which  still  exists)  and  there 
General  Rufus  Putnam  frequently  visited  him,  try- 
ing, in  vain,  to  turn  him  from  the  error  of  his  ways. 
From  this  hill-top,  Shays  and  his  followers,  made 
more  desperate  by  the  unusual  severity  of  the  winter 
and  the  inhospitality  of  the  Rutland  folk,  kept 
pouncing  upon  Worcester;  and  he  became  at  last  so 
menacing  that  the  sheriff  declared  himself  power- 
less to  protect  the  December  sitting  of  the  court, 
which  was  therefore  ordered  adjourned  to  January. 
Moreover,  Shays  repeatedly  threatened  to  march 
upon  Boston  and  rescue  Shattuck,  urging  the  disaf- 
fected ever\'where  to  meet  him  there.  This  stirred 
Boston  to  the  depths,  placed  her  for  some  weeks 
under  martial  rule,  with  sentries  in  her  streets  and 
cannon  upon  Fort  Hill,  and  impelled  the  Governor 
to  make  real  preparations  for  stamping  out  what  was 
now  seen  to  be  serious  and  widespread  rebellion.  As 
commander-in-chief,  he  ordered  4,400  militia  to 
take  the  field  for  30  days,  placed  General  Benja- 
min Lincoln  in  command  of  them,  and  made  certain 
their  pay  and  sustenance, — the  state  treasury  being 
empty   and    its  credit   nil, — by   loans   from   public- 


io8  "New  England  Conscience 

spirited  citizens.* 

In  addition  to  ordering  out  the  militia,  Gov- 
ernor Bowdoin  publicly  besought  the  aid  of  the 
people  in  restoring  order,  and  privately,  through 
General  Knox,  the  Secretary  of  War,  arranged  for 
the  intervention  of  the  Federal  Government.  So 
jealous  were  the  states,  hovi^ever,  of  such  interfer- 
ence, that  the  Congress  had  to  mask  its  purpose 
by  calling  for  troops  to  serve  against  the  North- 
West  Indians. 

General  Lincoln's  little  army  rendezvoused  at 
Roxbury  on  January  19,  1787,  and,  marching  im- 
mediately to  Worcester,  reached  there  on  the  22d, 
effectively  protecting  the  sitting  of  the  courts.  For 
Shays,  knowing  the  militia  to  be  on  the  march,  had 
shifted  his  ground  to  Springfield,  where  he  hoped 
to  gain  possession  of  the  government  arsenal.  He 
appeared  there  in  force  on  the  day  that  Lincoln 
reached  Worcester.  In  command  at  Springfield 
was  General  Shepard,  whom  Shays'  forces  had 
earlier,  as  will  be  remembered,  bloodlessly  en- 
countered. Under  Shepard,  however,  were  but 
1 100  militia,  while  against  him  were  now  arrayed 
not  only  Shays'  11 00  insurgents  on  the  east  of  the 
city,  but  also  400  more  under  Day,  on  the  west, 
and  at  least  400  more  from  Berkshire,  under  Eli 


*A  curious  side-light  is  thrown  upon  this  matter  of 
the  state's  credit  by  the  fact  that  Jacob  Kuhn,  the  cus- 
todian, or  janitor,  of  the  State  House,  could  secure 
wood  for  the  winter's  session  of  the  legislature  only 
by  pledging  his  personal  credit,  none  being  willing  to 
trust  the  State  itself. 


The  Shays  Rebellion  109 

Parsons,  on  the  north.  On  the  24th,  Shays  notified 
Day  that  he  proposed  to  attack  General  Shepard 
on  the  following  morning,  and  asked  for  Day's 
cooperation.  Whether  Day  was  really  not  ready, 
or  whether  he  hoped  to  capture  Shepard  all  by  him- 
self, does  not  appear.  But  he  returned  answer  to 
Shays  that  he  could  not  fight  until  the  26th.  This 
letter,  fortunately  for  the  militia,  was  intercepted. 
Shays  came  in  on  the  25th,  therefore,  fully  expect- 
ing Day  to  appear  from  the  opposite  side  of  the 
city,  in  his  support. 

As  Shays'  forces  approached  the  arsenal,  Shep- 
ard sent  him  formal  w^arning  that  he  would  be 
fired  upon  did  he  continue  to  advance.  This  pro- 
ducing no  effect,  Shepard  ordered  his  one  field  piece 
(familiarly  know^n  as  the  "government's  puppy") 
to  be  fired  above  the  heads  of  the  insurgents.  But 
still  they  marched  steadily  forward  until  within  a 
hundred  and  fifty  yards  of  the  militia.  Therefore, 
performing,  as  he  afterwards  said,  the  hardest  duty 
that  was  ever  his,  Shepard  ordered  the  gun  trained 
full  upon  these  deluded  men,  many  of  whom  had 
been  his  tried  comrades  throughout  the  Revolution. 
But  this  bitter  medicine  was  w^hat  the  social  disease 
of  rebellion  needed.  Screaming  "murder"  and 
leaving  three  men  dead  and  one  mortally  wounded, 
Shays'  army  fled,  and  in  such  disorder  that  had  not 
the  militia  general  been  as  temperate  as  he  was  firm, 
he  might  have  slaughtered  the  greater  part  of  it. 
For  another  anxious  day  he  guarded  the  arsenal, 
expecting  every  moment  the  approach  of  the  united 
forces  of  Shays,  Day  and  Parsons ;  but  on  the  second 


no  New  England  Conscience 


morning  relief  came.  Lincoln's  little  army  ap- 
peared and  took  command  of  the  city,  while  Shep- 
ard's  force  went  up  the  river  to  scatter  the  already 
demoralized  rebels.  From  point  to  point  he  drove 
them,  until  Shays  and  his  remnant  of  revolt  made  a 
stand  upon  one  of  the  high  hills  of  Pelham. 

In  the  meantime  the  news  of  Shepard's  alarming 
position  had  reached  Middlesex,  and  2000  militia, 
under  General  Brooks,  had  been  ordered  to  his  re- 
lief ;  but  they  had  gone  only  a  few  miles  when  news 
of  the  rout  of  Shays  returned  them,  reluctant  at 
losing  the  chance  to  fight,  to  their  homes. 

Following  up  the  victory  at  Springfield,  General 
Lincoln  invested — if  one  may  use  so  large  a  term — 
Shays'  force  at  Pelham,  and  summoned  him  to  sur- 
render in  a  letter  so  admirable  and  so  rarely  terse, 
as  to  rank  as  a  State  Paper: 

*  "Whether  you  are  convinced  or  not  of  your 
errour  in  flying  to  arms,  I  am  fully  persuaded  that 
before  this  hour,  you  must  have  the  fullest  con- 
viction upon  your  own  minds,  that  j'ou  are  not  able 
to  execute  your  original  purposes. 

"Your  resources  are  few,  your  force  is  incon- 
siderable, and  hourly  decreasing  from  the  disaffec- 
tion of  your  men ;  you  are  in  a  post  where  you  have 
neither  cover  nor  supplies,  and  in  a  situation  in 
which  you  can  neither  give  aid  to  your  friends,  nor 
discomfort  to  the  supporters  of  good  order  and  gov 
ernment.     .     .     .     Under  these  circumstances,  you 


♦Minot's  "History  of  the  Insurrections,"  Worcester, 
1788;  P.  118. 


The  Shays  Rebellion  III 

• 

cannot  hesitate  a  moment  to  disband  your  deluded 
followers.  If  you  should  not,  I  must  approach,  and 
apprehend  the  most  influential  characters  among 
you.  Should  you  attempt  to  fire  upon  the  troops 
of  government,  the  consequences  must  be  fatal  to 
many  of  your  men  the  least  guilty.  To  prevent 
bloodshed,  you  will  communicate  to  your  privates, 
that  if  they  will  instantly  lay  down  their  arms, 
surrender  themselves  to  government,  and  take  and 
subscribe  the  oath  of  allegiance  to  this  Common- 
wealth, they  shall  be  recommended  to  the  General 
Court  for  mercy.  If  you  should  either  withhold 
this  information  from  them,  or  suffer  your  people  to 
fire  upon  our  approach,  you  must  be  answerable  for 
all  the  ills  which  may  exist  in  consequence  thereof." 
Shays'  letter  in  reply  "bade  defiance,"  as  a  con- 
temporary remarked,  "alike  to  government,  to 
grammar  and  to  spelling."  He  asked  for  time,  on 
the  ground  that  petitions  for  redress  and  pardon  had 
been  despatched  to  the  General  Court.  Under  cover 
of  a  parley,  however,  he  withdrew  his  men  to  Peters- 
ham, where,  seemingly,  quarters  and  supplies  were 
more  plenty  than  at  Pelham.  General  Lincoln,  who 
was  then  at  Hadley,  heard  a  rumor  of  this  change 
of  base  at  three  o'clock  on  February  3rd.  The 
rumor  was  not  confirmed,  however,  until  six;  and 
his  army  could  not  be  got  under  way  till  eight. 
The  evening  was  warm ;  but  about  midnight  came 
up  a  New  England  northeast  wind,  with  driving 
snow  and  piercing  frost.  In  a  country  devoid,  as 
this  then  was,  of  shelter,  the  only  hope  of  life  lay 
in  keeping  on  the  march.     So  Lincoln's  little  army, 


112  New  England  Conscience 

suffering  horribly,  kept  on,  covered  the  whole  thirt,v 
miles,  over  snow-piled  roads,  in  thirteen  hours,  and 
arrived  at  Petersham,  with  every  man  more  or  less 
frost-bitten  and  not  a  few  left  frozen  on  the  way, 
at  nine  the  next  morning.  Shays'  men,  well  hous- 
ed, well  fed,  might  easily  have  destroyed  this  wretch- 
ed company;  but,  utterly  taken  by  surprise,  they 
simply  fled,  leaving  their  good  quarters  and  their 
steaming  rations  for  their  enemy's  relief.  This 
dramatic  and  truly  heroic  march  saw  the  real  end 
of  the  Rebellion ;  though,  as  in  all  such  contests, 
the  mob,  broken  up  into  small  parties,  growing  more 
and  more  desperate,  more  and  more  forgetful  of  the 
difference  (if  there  be  any)  between  warfare  and 
brigandage,  continued  to  harass  western  Massachu- 
setts for  many  a  month  to  come.  Indeed  the  great- 
est loss  of  life  on  both  sides  and  the  most  serious 
battle  of  all — that  of  Sheffield,  in  Berkshire  Coun- 
ty— took  place  after  Shays'  flight  from  Petersham; 
but  these  were  isolated  riots,  not  organized  rebellion, 
and  involved  no  serious  menace  to  the  state's  au- 
thority. 

The  leaders  and  many  of  the  rank  and  file  fled, 
under  General  Lincoln's  active  pursuit,  to  the  sur- 
rounding states ;  and  a  most  amusing  correspond- 
ence, throwing  a  flood  of  light  upon  interstate  jeal- 
ousies, took  place  between  Governor  Bowdoin  and 
their  several  Governors.  Connecticut  and  New 
Hampshire,  (the  latter  having  had  a  serious  in- 
surrection of  her  own)  cooperated  willingly  with 
Massachusetts,  treating  her  renegades  as  their  out- 
laws too.     New  York,  however,  always  arrogantly 


The  Shays  Rebellion  II3 

self-sufficient,  would  take  no  decided  stand  until 
the  insurgents  began  to  make  trouble  within  her 
own  borders;  when  she  promptly  came  over  and  did 
good  service  in  the  Berkshire  riots.  Rhode  Island 
(or,  as  she  was  then  always  called  by  her  loving 
sister  states.  Rogue's  Island)  openly  rejoiced  in  our 
discomfiture  and  elected  one  of  our  worst  rioters 
to  her  legislature.  The  Governor  of  Vermont, 
after  circumlocution  worthy  of  the  Empress  Do- 
wager of  China,  finally  declared  that  he  would  take 
no  harsh  action  against  our  refugees  who  had  sought 
shelter  in  his  state,  because  he  "could  not  afford 
to  discourage  immigration." 

This  scattered  rebellion  was  thus  long  kept  up, 
partly  with  the  desperation  of  men  who  know 
themselves  to  be  outlaws  and  who  rather  enjoy  the 
license  which  it  gives ;  partly  in  hope  of  frightening 
the  citizens  into  redressing  their  alleged  griev- 
ances; partly  in  the  belief  that  the  change  of  gov- 
ernment which  is  almost  sure  to  follow  disorder 
might  spare  their  threatened  necks.  In  this  last 
expectation  they  were,  as  any  student  of  democratic 
institutions  knows,  quite  fully  justified.  For  Gov- 
ernor Bowdoin  and  his  associates  had  put  down  re- 
bellion ;  but  they  had  ruined  their  political  careers. 
Their  harsh  measures  had  been  effective,  but,  of 
course,  not  popular.  Bowdoin  had  never  been  really 
acceptable  save  in  Boston ;  and,  besides  taking, 
finally,  strong  steps  to  smother  insurrection,  he  had 
vetoed  a  popular  measure, — that  for  reducing  his 
own  salary.  He  based  his  veto  on  constitutional 
grounds ;  but  this  act  destroyed  whatever  popularity 


114  New  England  Conscience 


he  before  possessed.  Therefore,  in  the  early  spring 
of  1787,  Hancock  decided  that  the  time  had  come 
to  recover  from  his  painful  illnesses;  and  in  the  be- 
lief, which  he  took  pains  not  to  discourage,  that  he 
would  cure  the  social  distresses  of  the  time,  he  was 
overwhelmingly  elected,  over  Bowdoin,  to  the  gov- 
ernorship. With  Hancock  came  in  also  another 
almost  untried  House  of  Representatives,  men  be- 
lieved to  be  more  favorable  to  the  popular  cause. 

Both  to  the  old  and  to  the  new  legislature  fell 
a  hard  and  thankless  task:  that  of  dealing  with  once 
trusted  citizens  who  had  been  in  open  revolt.  And 
as  was  to  be  expected,  both  made  equally  sorry  work 
of  it.  Prudence  warned  them  to  be  lenient;  fear 
impelled  them  to  be  stern ;  so  they  were  first  too 
stern  and  then,  frightened  by  popular  clamor,  too 
lenient.  Very  elaborate  acts  of  disqualification  were 
passed,  but  it  does  not  appear  that,  in  the  end  any 
one  was  really  disqualified  from  the  rights  of  citizen- 
ship. Fourteen  persons  were  convicted  of  treason 
and  were  sentenced  to  death ;  but  the  only  indi- 
vidual who  seems  to  have  had  anything  happen  to 
him  was  a  member  of  the  House  of  Representatives 
who  was  actually  made  to  sit  upon  the  gallows  with 
a  rope  around  his  neck  and  to  pay  a  fine  of  50 
pounds.  All  the  rest,  even  Shays,  Day,  Parsons, 
Wheeler  and  Shattuck,  either  were  pardoned  or 
were  allowed  to  live  undisturbed  in  some  state 
across  the  border.  Shays  died,  many  years  later  and 
in  great  poverty,  at  Sparta,  N.  Y. 

So  with  ever  lessening  echoes  of  scattered  disor- 
der,  ended    the   greatest   rebellion   against   her  au- 


The  Shays  Rebellion  II5 


thority  that  our  commonwealth  has  ever  seen.  In 
this  day  of  large  things,  the  debts  which  were  its 
fundamental  cause  seem  as  trivial  as  the  petty  fights 
which  marked  its  course.  But  if  one  projects  him- 
self into  that  time  of  small  things  and  rids  him- 
self of  his  present  knowledge  of  what  this  state  and 
what  democracy  have  done,  this  event  then  becomes 
as  portentous  to  us  as  it  was  to  the  statesmen  of 
the  time.  To  them  a  million  dollars  was  enormous ; 
they  saw  the  mountain  of  debt,  but  could  not  dream 
of  the  resources  beyond ;  they  had  proclaimed  a  re- 
public, but  had  no  assurance  from  history  that  a 
democracy  such  as  this  could  hold  together  for  ten 
years;  they  had  still  to  work  out  the  vast  fabric 
of  the  constitution ;  they  had  as  yet  no  finance,  no 
trade,  practically  no  manufactures.  Thus  naked 
of  resources  and  of  political  experience,  what  won- 
der that  many  of  them  saw  in  the  Shays  Rebel- 
lion the  opening  scene  of  general  anarchy,  the  pref- 
ace to  an  utter  downfall  of  democracy.  Changing 
thus  our  view-point,  we  too  see  what  a  crisis  in  the 
history  not  only  of  Massachusetts  but  of  the  nation 
this  Shays  Rebellion  was,  and  we  wonder,  not  that 
our  great-grandfathers  made  so  many  mistakes  in 
handling  it,  but  that  they  made  so  few.  Perhaps 
we  are  ready,  too,  to  agree  with  him  who  called 
the  quelling  of  the  Shays  Rebellion  one  of  "the 
twelve  great  campaigns  of  history." 

This  Rebellion  taught  our  forefathers  at  least  two 
things:  first,  that  the  states  must  bind  themselves 
together  by  some  stronger  bond  than  the  Articles 
of  Confederation ;  second,  that  they  must  deal  stem- 


Ii6  New  England  Conscience 

ly  with  disobedience  to  organic  law.  Said  Samuel 
Adams,  in  opposing  pardon  to  the  convicted  leaders 
of  the  insurrection:  "In  monarchies,  the  crime  of 
treason  and  rebellion  may  admit  of  being  pardoned ; 
but  the  man  who  dares  to  rebel  against  the  laws  of 
a  republic  ought  to  sufEer  death."  That  first  les- 
son which  the  state  and  the  country  learned  hast- 
ened, without  a  doubt,  the  adoption  of  the  Consti- 
tution ;  and  that  second  lesson  has  been  slowly  teach- 
ing our  lawmakers  to  make  ever  wiser  distinctions 
between  liberty,  a  social  good  which  cannot  be  too 
widely  extended,  and  license,  a  social  ill  which  can- 
not be  too  sternly  repressed. 


Destruction    of   the    Ursuline   Convent     117 


VI 

The  Destruction  of  the  Ursuline  Convent 

AT    ChARLESTOWN,    MASSACHUSETTS,    1 834 

R  RELIGIOUS  riot  in  Boston  within 
living  memory  seems,  in  these  days  of 
toleration,  almost  incredible.  To  a  dis- 
belief at  the  time  in  the  possibility  of 
such  a  disaster  and  to  a  failure,  there- 
fore, to  take  proper  precautions,  the  burning  of  the 
Ursuline  Convent  in  Charlestown,  on  the  night  of 
August  II,  1834,  was  mainly  due.  But  the  frenzy 
of  the  mob  and  the  supineness  of  the  onlookers  had 
a  deeper  origin  still  in  that  general  law  which  so 
often  controls  the  acts  of  mankind,  the  Law  of 
Crowds.  This  law — of  which  Gustave  Le  Bon 
has  given  so  excellent  a  demonstration — causes  men 
in  masses  to  act  either  much  worse  or  much  better 
than  they  would  as  individuals.  Over  and  over 
again  history  has  shown  that  when  a  number  of 
persons  are  gathered  together,  whether  in  an  ordin- 
ary mob,  a  convention,  a  legislative  assembly,  or  an 
audience  of  any  kind ;  or  when  otherwise  unrelated 
persons  are  held  together  by  political,  religious  or 
social  beliefs,  forming  them  into  parties,  sects  or 
castes, — the  action  of  men  so  formed  into  a  crowd 
is  in  many  cases  entirely  different  from  what  one's 
experience  of  them  as  individuals  would  lead  one 
to  expect.  Shielded  and  made  nameless  by  surround- 
ing numbers  the  individual  loses  his  fear  of  cpn- 


Ii8  New  England  Conscience 

sequences,  his  sense  of  accountability,  in  no  small 
degree  his  individuality  itself.  Thus  transformed, 
he  becomes,  as  it  were,  but  an  atom  in  the  crowd- 
mass,  moving  as  it  moves,  feeling  as  it  feels,  acting 
as  it  acts.  The  higher  powers  of  the  man,  those  of 
reason  and  judgment,  give  place  to  the  lower  ones, 
those  of  instinct  and  emotion;  and  these  instincts 
and  emotions,  acting  and  reacting  one  upon  another, 
are  intensified  sometimes  to  a  pitch  of  frenzy,  so 
that  persons  who,  under  ordinary  conditions,  are 
sober,  law-abiding  and  cautious  in  behavior,  will,  in 
a  crowd,  commit  acts  of  heroism  or  of  brutality 
seemingly  impossible.  Whether  their  deeds  be  heroic 
or  bestial  depends  wholly  upon  the  direction  in 
which  their  instincts  and  emotions  are  impelled. 
For  a  crowd  is  swayed  in  one  or  all  of  three  ways: 
by  a  dramatic  event ;  by  a  fixed  idea  which  has  been 
built  up  through  years  or  even  through  generations; 
or  by  an  individual  who  has  power  of  emotional 
leadership.  To  one  or  all  of  these  things  a  crowd 
will  yield  itself  much  as  the  hypnotized  patient  yields 
to  the  hypnotizer;  and,  under  the  suggestions  of 
that  idea  or  leader  or  event,  will  go  to  almost  any 
length  of  sublimity  or  infamy.  Such  a  crowd  will 
march  undismayed  against  an  overwhelming  foe,  will 
slaughter  its  dearest  friends,  will  endure  fatigues 
impossible  to  individuals,  will  do  deeds  utterly  ab- 
horrent under  usual  conditions  to  most  of  those  who 
commit  them.  Nothing  is  too  extravagant  for  a 
crowd  to  accept  as  fact,  no  revulsion  of  feeling  un- 
der a  new  impulse  is  too  immense  for  it  to  experi- 
ence,  no   refinement  of   cruelty  or,  on   the  other 


Destruction    of   the    Ursuline    Convent     119 

hand,  no  height  of  heroism  is  too  tremendous  for 
such  a  crowd  to  indulge  in.  But  in  none  of  these 
things,  good  or  bad,  does  it  exhibit  reason.  This 
was  well  exemplified  in  the  notorious  Charlestown 
mob  of  1834. 

In  that  year  Boston  differed  almost  more  from  the 
Boston  of  to-day  than  it  did  from  that  of  1634.  It 
was  still,  to  all  intents  and  purposes,  a  village,  cut 
off  from  the  rest  of  the  world  by  seas,  isolated 
from  its  sister  cities  by  feebleness  of  transporta- 
tion. Its  population  was  still  practically  homogene- 
ous and  of  the  Puritan  type.  It  still  viewed  Popery 
with  the  hatred  of  the  days  of  the  Gunpowder  Plot, 
still  looked  upon  foreigners  with  eyes  not  very  dif- 
ferent from  those  with  which  the  Chinese,  not  with- 
out reason,  regard  the  "foreign  devil"  to-day. 

The  population  of  the  entire  United  States  was 
only  about  fourteen  millions,  that  of  Boston  scarcely 
forty  thousand ;  and  what  is  now  the  Charlestown 
District  was  then  an  independent  town.  But  the 
development  of  railroads,  coupled  with  political 
and  social  distresses  in  Ireland,  had  brought  new 
problems  into  the  lives  of  this  chosen  people  of 
Puritan  Yankees.  The  demand  for  laborers  had 
attracted  what  seemed  in  those  days  a  vast  number 
of  foreigners,  mainly  Irish,  and  their  coming  had 
created  the  necessity  for  the  Roman  Catholic  re- 
ligion, a  demand  which  the  zealous  leaders  of  that 
faith  are  never  slow  in  meeting.  Thousands  of 
Catholics  had,  within  a  few  years,  come  to  the  city, 
and  they  were  ministered  to  by  two  churches:  the 
Cathedral  of  the  Holy  Cross,  on  Franklin  Street, 


120  New  England  Conscience 

and  a  smaller  church  in  Charlestown.  To  the  less 
intelligent  portion  of  this  homogeneous  little  city, 
here  were  two  portentous  things:  imported  labor, 
and  the  vanguard  of  the  Pope  of  Rome.  More 
significant,  the  two  new  things  seemed  to  have 
close  relation. 

Meanwhile,  the  Catholic  Order  of  St.  Ursula,  a 
sisterhood  vowed  to  the  giving  of  religious  and 
secular  instruction,  had  established,  in  1820,  a  con- 
vent in  a  small  building  next  to  the  Cathedral ;  and 
so  well  did  these  nuns  prosper  that  in  1826  they  re- 
moved to  a  larger  building  at  the  foot  of  Mt.  Bene- 
dict (then  at  the  extreme  limit  of  Charlestown, 
now  a  part  of  Somerville)  and  began  the  erection  of 
a  large  convent  on  the  top  of  the  hill  itself,  in  the 
midst  of  an  estate  of  twelve  acres.  A  minor  cause 
of  offence  was  that  they  were  enabled  to  do  this 
largely  through  the  generosity  of  a  converted  Prot- 
estant, a  Mr.  Thayer.  In  1828  the  new  building 
was  occupied,  and  a  conspicuous  and  imposing  one 
it  must  have  been.  The  main  house  was  fully 
eighty  feet  long,  three  stories  high,  with  a  pitched 
roof,  a  large  dormer,  and  a  cupola;  and  on  either 
side  it  had  wings,  a  story  less  in  height,  extended 
back  to  enclose  a  paved  courtyard.  The  whole  was 
of  brick  and,  with  its  grounds  elaborately  terraced, 
with  gardens  and  bowers  and  greenhouses,  with  a 
farmhouse,  barn  and  other  out-buildings,  and  with  a 
view  embracing  on  one  side  the  whole  Boston  basin 
with  its  flanking  hills,  and  on  the  other  the  harbor 
and  the  sea,  the  institution  must  have  indeed  been, 
as  its  circular  asserted,  "an  extensive  establishment 


Destruction  of  the   Ursuline  Convent      I2I 


.  .  .  commanding  one  of  the  most  beautiful 
prospects  in  the  United  States." 

The  course  of  study  which  the  Convent  offered 
was  no  less  elaborate  than  the  building.  "All  the 
attainments"  were  to  be  got  there — to  quote  again 
from  the  circular — "which  may  be  found  necessary, 
useful  and  ornamental  in  society."  The  young  ladies 
in  the  Junior  Department  (the  juniors  and  seniors 
being  inexorably  kept  apart)  had  to  content  them- 
selves with  the  common  branches  and  plain  and 
fancy  needlework;  but  no  sooner  did  they  enter  the 
Senior  Department  than  they  had  spread  before 
their  minds,  according  to  the  prospectus,  "Plain  and 
ornamental  writing;  Composition,  both  in  prose  and 
poetry;  ancient,  modern  and  natural  History; 
Chronology ;  Mythology ;  and  the  use  of  the  Globes ; 
Astronomy;  Rhetoric;  Logic;  Natural  and  Moral 
Philosophy;  Chemistry,  Arithmetic;  Geometry; 
and  Botany;  every  kind  of  useful  and  ornamental 
Needlework;  Japanning;  Drawing  in  all  its  varie- 
ties; Painting  on  Velvet,  Satin  and  Wood;  and 
the  beautiful  style  of  Mezzotinto  and  Poonah  Paint- 
ing." Music  with  different  instruments  and  danc- 
ing were  also  taught,  the  latter  by  the  original 
Papanti;  and  this  feast  of  arts  and  sciences  was 
capped,  in  the  last  quarter,  and  at  an  added  charge 
of  twenty  dollars,  with  cookery. 

We  may  smile  at  this  formidable  list  and  wonder 
how  five  women  could  impart  so  much  in  so  short  a 
space  of  time ;  but  it  was  the  English  fashion  of  that 
day,  and  many  a  day  after,  for  the  accomplished 
young  lady  to  do  all  things — most  of  them  very 


122  New  England  Conscience 

badly;  and  there  seems  everj'  reason  to  believe  that 
the  overworked  Sisters  of  St.  Ursula,  mainly  Irish 
ladies,  were  accomplished  and  well  taught.  In  this 
school  on  Mt.  Benedict  was  offered,  therefore,  a 
training  very  rare  in  the  New  England  of  that  time. 
Absolute  regularity  of  hours  was  enforced  by  the 
Convent  bell,  from  the  early  rising  at  half  past  five 
to  the  early  retiring  at  half  past  seven.  The  day 
was  well  filled  with  tasks — not  the  long  list  of 
the  prospectus,  but  the  common  branches,  together 
with  drawing,  writing,  lettering,  sevuing,  embroid- 
ery, music  and  other  accomplishments  thought  es- 
sential to  the  well  bred  girl  of  eighty  years  ago. 
The  school  rooms  were  small,  with  square  boxes 
placed  regularly  around  them,  and  with  one  or 
more  tables  in  the  centre.  On  the  boxes  the  pupils 
sat,  their  backs,  in  the  good  old  fashion,  unsupport- 
ed; and  in  the  boxes  were  kept  their  books.  On 
fine  afternoons  the  girls  did  much  of  their  work- 
ing, and  some  playing,  out  of  doors,  a  nun  always 
with  them,  not  to  repress  them,  but,  on  the  con- 
trary, to  take  a  lively  and  childlike  interest  in  their 
most  trivial  doings.  The  meals,  eaten  in  silence, 
were  plain  but  wholesome:  always  an  abundance 
of  good  bread,  sometimes  with  butter,  sometimes 
with  sauce,  never  with  both ;  plenty  of  fresh  milk ; 
tea  or  coffee  made  innocuously  weak ;  meat  once  a 
day,  excepting,  of  course,  on  Fridays;  vegetables 
from  the  Convent  farm ;  and  occasionally  a  plain 
pudding.  The  uniform  of  the  girls  was  a  gray 
bombazet  with  caps  of  blue,  save  on  Sunday,  when 
white  was   permitted,   and   on  certain   great   days, 


Destruction  of  the   Ursuline  Convent      123 

when  a  pink  sash  might  decorate  the  white. 

The  supreme  event  of  the  school  year  was  Cor- 
onation Day.  Then  parents  and  friends  for  the 
only  time  were  admitted  to  the  schoolrooms,  the 
prizes  of  the  year  awarded,  a  gold  and  silver  medal 
given,  and  the  two  best  girls  of  the  year  crowned 
with  artificial  wreaths  (white  for  the  senior  and 
pink  for  the  junior)  and  seated  upon  thrones  to  the 
sound  of  a  coronation  song.  One  stanza  of  this 
will  perhaps  suffice: 

"Proceed,  fair  Queens,  to  your  fond  homes; 
Give  joy   unto  that  sacred   dome ; 
.  Return  to  be  a  Father's  pride. 
The  stay  of  a  fond  Mother's  side. 
Long  may  your  a\  elcomc's  echo  sound, 
And  grateful  words  be  heard  around. 
Long  may  your  virtues  breathe  on  earth, 
Long  breathe  the  odour  of  your  worth." 

Then  followed  the  one  feast  of  the  year,  at  which 
the  nuns  vied  with  one  another  in  producing  elabo- 
rately indigestible  dishes,  whose  secrets  they  had 
learned  in  the  French  convents  of  their  j^ounger 
days. 

The  pupils  of  this  Ursuline  house  on  Mt.  Bene- 
dict, averaging  about  seventy  in  number,  were  main- 
ly the  daughters  of  wealthy  Protestants.  Most  of 
the  girls  bore  names  distinguished  in  Boston  and  its 
vicinity:  but  a  few — and  these  were  generally  the 
only  Catholics — came  from  regions  so  widely  sepa- 
rate as  Canada  and  the  West  Indies.  Beyond  at- 
tendance upon  morning  prayers,  and  mass  on  Sun- 


124  New  England  Conscience 

A-Jiys,  the  Protestants  were  required  to  take  part 
in  no  religious  exercises,  nor  was  the  slightest  at- 
tempt made  to  convert  any  to  the  Romanist  faith. 
7'his  point  was  so  hotly  disputed  at  the  time,  and 
afterwards,  that  it  is  most  valuable  to  have  direct 
testimony  from  Protestant  ladies  who  were  pupils 
at  the  Convent,  declaring  that,  while  good  moraU 
were  constantly  instilled  by  the  sisters,  the  subject 
of  religion  was  never  broached  by  them.  The 
Protestant  pupils  were  not  simply  permitted,  they 
were  required,  to  take  their  own  Bibles  to  the  church 
services,  and  were  urged  to  read  from  them  during 
the  saying  of  the  mass.  One  of  these  ladies  states, 
further,  that  never  were  more  perfect  gentlewomen 
than  the  sisters,  and  that  not  once  in  her  long  resi- 
dence did  she  see  them  out  of  temper  or  wanting  in 
sweet  patience.  Notwithstanding — or  perhaps  be- 
cause of — this  serenity  of  disposition  and  the  ab- 
sence of  severe  punishments,  the  discipline  among 
the  pupils  was  extraordinarily  good.  Their  great- 
est transgression,  which  brought  its  own  swift  pun- 
ishment, was  the  stealing  and  eating  of  raw  tur- 
nips from  the  Convent  garden. 

The  Mother  Superior,  a  French-Irish  woman,  did 
no  teaching,  her  time  being  more  than  occupied  with 
a  general  oversight  of  the  establishment.  She  was 
little  seen,  therefore,  by  the  pupils,  unless  they  were 
sent  to  her  for  admonition.  Mild  as  her  punish- 
ments were,  her  extraordinary  dignity  of  manner 
seems  to  have  made  an  astonishing  impression,  so 
that  the  smile  or  frown  of  an  Eastern  potentate 
could  not  have  been  more  momentous.     This  regal 


Destruction  of  the   Ursuline  Convent      125 


attitude  and  habit  of  mind,  coupled  with  an  ignor- 
ance of  the  world  in  general  and  of  the  Yankee 
world  in  particular,  made  that  secular  intercourse 
which,  as  Superior,  it  was  her  duty  to  carry  on,  not 
entirely  successful.  Mother  St.  George  (that  be- 
ing her  religious  name)  lacked  tact;  she  despised 
her  neighbors,  the  brick-making  canaille,  mostly 
worthy  men  from  New  Hampshire,  who  hated  Pop- 
ery and  all  its  works;  and  she  had  little  patience, 
although  she  paid  them  promptly,  with  the  heretic 
trades-people  and  town  officials  of  Charlestown. 

The  winter  of  1833-34  was  one  of  extraordinary 
religious  revival  in  New  England.  The  active  and 
fervent  Protestant  preachers  of  Boston  and  its  vicin- 
ity seized  the  fruitful  occasion  to  denounce  Pop- 
ery. Dr.  Lyman  Beecher,  especially,  in  a  series  of 
lectures,  seems  to  have  hurled  all  the  thunderbolts 
of  his  eloquence  against  the  Catholic  Church  so 
rapidly  taking  root  in  Protestant  America.  These 
zealous  pastors  can  scarcely  have  refrained  from 
pointing  their  words  by  directing  a  warning  finger 
towards  this  prosperous  house  set  conspicuously  on 
a  hill  and  holding  within  its  walls  the  daughters 
of  so  many  Protestants.  At  the  same  time,  the 
laborers  and  mechanics  were  not  slow  to  denounce 
the  Irish  Papists,  seeking  and  securing  the  work 
that  belonged  of  right  to  the  natives,  and  to  imagine 
all  manner  of  Jesuitical  plots  in  this  rapidly  increas- 
ing influx  of  foreign  Catholics.  Moreover,  the  pu- 
pils of  the  Convent  themselves,  very  properly  forbid- 
den to  enter  that  part  of  the  house  reserved  to  the 
use  of  the  nuns,  imagined,  with  schoolgirl  readiness, 


126  New  England  Conscience 

many  mysteries,  which,  told  outside  the  school,  grew 
with  repetition  into  startling  tales.  So  from  all 
sides  the  law  of  the  crowd  was  slowly  working,  and 
the  minds  of  the  people  were  being  brought  into  a 
widespread  state  of  suspicion,  ready  for  hypnotic 
leading  to  almost  any  lengths. 

The  first  incident  to  attract  general  attention 
was  the  alleged  escape  of  Rebecca  Theresa  Reed.  She 
was  an  ignorant  but  imaginative  young  person,  whom 
much  reading  of  romances  had  made  yearn  for  the 
life  of  a  nun.  Taken  into  Mt.  Benedict  as  a  ser- 
vant, she  was  soon  disenchanted,  and  ran  away. 
This  she  did  by  breaking  through  lattices  and  climb- 
ing a  high  fence,  although  the  carriage  gate  of  the 
Convent  grounds  stood  wide  open.  The  Mother 
Superior  happened  to  witness  this  melodramatic 
flight,  and  called  several  of  the  sisters  and  pupils 
to  the  window  "to  see  Miss  Reed  run  away."  This 
girl's  romantic  imagination  and  the  credulity  of  cer- 
tain of  her  friends  created  marvelous  revelations  of 
ill-treatment  and  wrongdoing  at  the  Convent,  reve- 
lations which  passed  from  ear  to  ear,  ever  amplified 
as  they  traveled,  and  which,  after  the  destruction  of 
the  Convent,  were  published  under  the  title,  "Six 
Months  in  a  Convent,"  producing  much  excite- 
ment and  controversy.  In  this  book — which  was 
written  for  her — Miss  Reed  made  charges  of  for- 
cible proselyting  and  of  an  intended  abduction  of 
herself  to  St.  Louis;  but  these  charges  were  woven 
into  such  a  tissue  of  false  and  improbable  state- 
ments, that  it  is  charitable  to  suppose  her  to  have 
been  a  neurotic  who,  by  her  imaginings  and  repeti- 


Destruction   of   the   Ursuline   Convent       127 


tion  of  them  to  others,  brought  herself  into  a  state 
of  actual  belief.  While  it  is  impossible  flatly  to 
confute  her  statements,  there  is  the  strongest  internal 
evidence  against  them,  the  simple  fact  that  she 
alone  saw  and  experienced  these  dreadful  things 
being  enough  to  disprove  them  in  a  court  of  law. 
However,  her  stories  made  a  vast  impression,  espe- 
cially as  they  were  met,  on  the  part  of  the  Mother 
Superior,  with  the  contemptuous  and  violent 
language  which  she  almost  habitually  used  towards 
too  zealous  Protestants, 

A  trivial  incident — the  ordering  off  the  Convent 
grounds  by  the  porter,  the  popular  story  asserting 
with  violence  and  the  setting  on  of  the  Convent  dog. 
of  some  ladies  who  had  attempted  to  cross  them, 
and  the  subsequent  drubbing  of  the  porter  by  a 
brick-maker,  Buzzell,  afterwards  one  of  the  lead- 
ers of  the  riot — did  not  tend  to  improve  the  strained 
relations  between  the  Superior  and  her  neighbors ; 
and  on  July  28  occurred  a  sensational  affair  which 
seemed  to  confirm  the  stories  of  the  eloped  Miss 
Reed  and  to  prove  this  imposing  building  on  Mt. 
Benedict  a  veritable  Bastille. 

A  large  share  of  the  labor  of  preparing  for  the 
Coronation  Day  of  1834  had  fallen  upon  the  Mother 
Assistant,  Sister  Mary  John,  the  teacher  of  music. 
It  is  stated  that  for  a  long  period  she  had  to  give 
no  less  than  fourteen  lessons  of  at  least  forty-five 
minutes  each  a  day.  This  tax  upon  her  nerves  result- 
ed, naturally,  in  brain  fever.  In  delirium  she  escaped 
from  the  Convent,  sought  refuge  with  its  nearest 
neighbor,  a  Mr.  Cutter,  and  was  by  him  sent  to 


128  New  England  Conscience 


what  was  then  West  Cambridge,  to  the  house  of 
Mr.  Cotting,  two  of  whose  daughters  had  been 
pupils  at  the  nunnery. 

A  night's  rest  under  the  tender  care  of  the  Cot- 
tings  restored  Miss  Harrison  (for  such  was  her 
worldly  name),  and  on  the  next  day,  at  her  own 
earnest  wish,  she  was  taken  back  to  the  Convent. 
But  the  ravings  of  this  nun  while  in  delirium,  her 
appeals  for  aid,  and  the  not  unnatural  perturbation 
of  the  Mother  Superior  and  the  Bishop  over  her 
flight,  gave  rise  to  most  dreadful  rumors.  Here, 
then,  was  the  striking  incident  needful  to  compel 
the  attention  of  the  community  and  to  carry  out 
the  law  of  crowds.  At  once  this  poor  sister  was 
dubbed  the  "Mysterious  Lady,"  and  the  wildest 
stories  of  her  ill-treatment  and  sufferings  found  im- 
mediate and  unqualified  belief.  In  the  popular 
mind  the  building  on  Mt.  Benedict  became  a  very 
labyrinth  of  dungeons,  crowded  with  instruments  of 
torture,  and  every  iniquity  associated  with  the  most 
corrupt  periods  of  the  church  was  fastened  upon 
this  quiet  institution. 

Within  ten  days  after  the  return  of  Sister  Mary 
John  to  the  Convent,  rumors  of  her  imprisonment, 
of  her  secret  removal  to  more  horrid  dungeons, 
even  of  her  torturing  and  murder  by  being  buried 
alive,  had  attained  extravagant  proportions.  The 
Boston  daily  papers  added  fuel  to  the  flame  by  pub- 
lishing these  rumors,  without  comment,  but  with- 
out the  slightest  investigation  as  to  their  probability. 

To  quiet  the  public  agitation,  Mr.  Cutter,  in 
whose  house  Sister  Mary  John  in  her  delirium  had 


Destruction  of  the   Ursuline  Convent       129 


first  taken  refuge,  called  at  the  Convent  on  Satur- 
day, August  9,  saw  the  now  convalescent  nun,  and 
was  by  her  informed,  with  lamentations  over  the 
trouble  into  which  she  had  brought  the  sisterhood, 
that  she  was  entirely  at  liberty  to  leave  the  Convent 
at  any  time,  but  that  she  had  not  the  slightest  wish 
to  do  so.  This  gentleman  agreed,  therefore,  to 
publish  over  his  signature  the  true  facts  regarding 
this  so-called  "Mysterious  Lady"  in  the  Boston 
papers  of  Monday  morning.  Unfortunately,  in 
those  sleepy  days  of  journalism,  his  statement  did 
not  appear  till  Tuesday. 

Meanwhile  the  selectmen  of  Charlestown,  be- 
stirring themselves,  had  arranged  thoroughly  to 
inspect  the  Convent;  and  on  the  afternoon  of  Mon- 
day, the  eleventh,  they  visited  the  building.  If  we 
are  to  trust  the  account  of  Mrs.  Whitney,  in  her 
book,  "The  Burning  of  the  Convent,"  these  officials 
were  met  with  upbraiding  ironi  the  Superior  and 
with  jeers  from  the  pupils;  but  according  to  their 
own  published  statement,  which  did  not,  of  course, 
appear  until  Tuesday,  the  twelfth,  "they  were  con- 
ducted by  the  lady  in  question"  (Sister  Mary  John) 
"throughout  the  premises,  and  into  every  apartment 
of  the  place,  the  whole  of  which  is  in  good  order, 
and  nothing  appearing  to  them  to  be  in  the  least 
objectionable ;  and  they  have  the  satisfaction  to 
assure  the  public  that  there  exists  no  cause  of  com- 
plaint on  the  part  of  said  female,  as  she  expresses 
herself  to  be  entirely  satisfied  with  her  present  situa- 
tion, it  being  that  of  her  own  choice,  and  that  she 
has  no  desire  or  wish  to  alter  it." 


I30  New  England  Conscience 


Whatever  fault  one  may  find  with  the  English  of 
this  statement,  it  was  explicit;  but  it  came  too 
late, — would  have  been  too  late  even  had  it  ap- 
peared on  the  morning  of  the  fatal  day.  The  law 
of  the  mob  had  done  its  work,  reason  had  departed 
from  the  hypnotized  mind  of  the  community,  and 
imagination,  running  riot,  had  built  up  a  fabric 
more  lasting  than  was  to  be  the  "beautiful  edifice" 
upon    Mt.    Benedict. 

For,  during  those  early  August  days,  the  "Boston 
Truckmen"  and  other  organized  bodies  had  been 
holding  secret  meetings.  From  them,  or  from  other 
sources,  had  come  inflammatory  circulars  denounc- 
ing Catholicism  in  general  and  the  nunnery  in 
particular.  Destruction  of  the  Convent  building 
was  openly  threatened ;  and  rumors  of  a  most 
alarming  nature  flew  about  the  city.  A  procession 
of  parents  and  friends,  therefore,  visited  the  Superior 
all  day  on  Monday.  Not  one  of  them,  however, 
thought  it  necessary  to  remove  the  pupils,  all  agree- 
ing that  a  mob  in  the  vicinity  of  staid  old  Boston 
in  the  nineteenth  century  was  something  not  to  be 
thought  of.  These  visits,  the  continual  requests 
for  a  sight  of  Sister  Mary  John,  the  inspection  by 
the  selectmen,  seem  to  have  electrified  the  atmos- 
phere of  the  sleepy  Convent  with  a  new  and  pleas- 
urable excitement  rather  than  with  fear.  So  un- 
wonted was  the  bustle,  that  soon  after  their  early 
going  to  bed  the  pupils  in  their  several  dormitories 
were  fast  asleep. 

Towards  ten  o'clock  this  sleep  was  broken  by 
sudden   and   fearful   howls.     The  much   talked   of 


Destruction   of  the   UrsuUne  Convent      131 


mob  had  really  come,  having  swept  in  comparative 
silence  out  from  Boston  over  the  Charlestown 
bridge.  It  was  as  yet  small  in  size  and  wholly 
irresolute ;  but,  wakened  by  its  onward  rush  and 
shouting,  the  pupils,  already  in  a  state  of  tension, 
were  at  once  thrown  into  a  fever  of  excitement, 
most  of  them  screaming,  not  a  few  falling  in 
hysterics  and  some  in  a  dead  faint.  The  poor  nuns 
— always  excepting  the  Mother  Superior,  who  never 
faltered  or  flinched  throughout  that  fearful  night — 
were  in  little  better  case  than  the  children,  one  of 
them  going  off  into  convulsive  fits.  Sister  Mary 
John,  the  innocent  immediate  cause  of  the  disaster, 
again  losing  her  shaken  wits,  and  a  novice,  far  ad- 
vanced in  consumption  and  who  died  within  a  few 
days  from  shock,  remaining  all  night  as  one  already 
dead. 

For  two  hours  the  mob  did  little  except  to  hurl 
blasphemous  and  indecent  tttreats  against  the  nun- 
nery, defying  the  Superior  to  come  out,  and  calling 
upon  her  to  show  them  the  "Mysterious  Lady" 
imprisoned  in  the  dungeons  of  the  Convent.  Little 
of  this,  fortunately,  reached  the  ears  of  the  chil- 
dren, for  the  dormitories  were  at  the  back  of  the 
building;  but  the  nuns,  cowering  in  the  unlighted 
front  rooms,  heard  it  all ;  and  the  Mother  Superior, 
chafing  more  and  more  under  the  horrible  insults, 
could  at  last  be  no  longer  restrained.  Breaking 
away  from  the  weening  sisters,  she  flung  wide  the 
middle  door— that  floor  which  only  she  and  the 
Bishop  had  a  right  to  use — and  faced  the  mob. 
Had  she  understood  the  fickleness  of  crowds,  had 


132  New  England  Conscience 


she  known  the  power  that  a  woman  of  her  courage 
has,  had  she  appreciated  that  sight  and  sound  of 
poor  Mary  John,  even  in  her  distraught  condition, 
would  have  set  at  rest  the  rumors  at  least  of  murder, 
she  might  at  that  eleventh  hour  have  saved  her 
community.  But  she  met  that  cursing  mob  with  a 
violence  only  less  than  their  own,  calling  them 
vagabonds,  drunkards,  canaille,  exciting  their  worst 
suspicions  by  positively  refusing  to  produce  the  sis- 
ter, and  threatening  them,  in  language  she  had 
already  used  to  Mr.  Cutter,  that  "if  they  did  not 
immediately  disperse.  Bishop  Fenwick  had  ten  thou- 
sand Irishmen  at  his  back,  who  would  sweep  them 
all  into  the  sea."  No  combination  of  words  could 
have  been  more  ill-timed.  This  threat  was  im- 
mediately answered  by  two  pistol  shots,  which  going 
wide  of  their  mark,  resulted  both  in  a  temporary 
sobering  of  the  mob  and  in  a  forced  retreat  of  the 
Superior,  dragged  back  into  the  house  by  her  terrifi- 
ed subordinates. 

For  some  time  yet  the  mob  hesitated,  prowling 
about,  muttering  and  cursing;  then,  of  a  sudden  it 
swept  ofiF  down  the  hill,  and  the  mercurial  children 
became  frantic  with  the  joy  of  relief, — but  only  for 
a  short  time.  Soon  they  hear  a  tearing  and  crack- 
ing, as  the  crowd  pull  down  the  Convent  fences; 
soon  they  see  first  a  flickering  and  then  a  flaming, 
as  huge  bonfires,  richly  fed  with  tar  barrels,  shoot 
up,  revealing  the  rioters,  some  of  them  fantastically 
disguised,  dancing  like  madmen  in  rings  about  the 
flames. 

Whether  or  not  preconcerted,  these  bonfires  set 


Destruction   of  the   Ursuline  Convent      133 

on  that  lofty  hill  attract  within  a  short  time  a  mul- 
titude of  people.  They  attract,  too,  the  primitive 
fire  engine  of  Charlestown  and  the  newly-created 
fire  department  of  Boston.  The  former  firemen,  af- 
ter some  parley  with  the  rioters,  go,  like  the  king  of 
France,  down  the  hill  again;  the  latter  remain  (and 
probably  their  contention  that  they  took  no  part  in 
the  assault  of  the  Convent  was  justified),  but  do 
nothing  to  save  the  threatened  property,  being  com- 
pletely paralyzed  by  the  mob  spirit.  At  that  time, 
and  even  much  later,  a  few  resolute  men,  all  testi- 
mony goes  to  show,  could  easily  have  dispersed  the 
rioters;  but,  as  we  have  seen,  the  firemen  did  noth- 
ing; one  selectman  raised  a  feeble  voice,  but  hav- 
ing weak  eyes,  too  weak  to  recognize  any  of  the 
rioters,  soon  went  home  and  to  bed;  and  a  great 
crowd  of  ordinarily  respectable  citizens,  who,  there 
is  no  doubt,  were  spectators  of  the  scene,  contented 
themselves  with  watching  from  afar,  the  word 
"mob"  and  the  hypnotism  of  the  situation  wholly 
quenching  their  collective  courage. 

Probably  at  this  point  a  powerful  sustainer  of 
mobs  in  the  shape  of  a  barrel  of  rum  was  brought 
and  distributed.  Made  brave  by  this,  the  body  of 
one  or  two  hundred  men,  with  brands  from  the  fires, 
again  surged  up  the  hill  like  savages.  Armed  with 
bricks  and  stones,  deaf  to  all  thought  of  reason, 
possessed  by  an  animal  hunger  for  destruction,  they 
began,  shortly  after  midnight,  this  most  outrageous 
assault  upon  a  house  occupied  solely  by  ten  feeble 
women  and  fifty  terror-stricken  children.  Never, 
certainly  in  the  history  of  New  England,  has  there 


134  Neiv  ETigland  Conscience 

been  a  more  cowardly  performance.  Bad  as  some 
others  of  our  mobs  have  been,  their  fury  was  at  least 
directed  against  men,  possessing  some  power  of  re- 
sistance and  retaliation. 

The  character  of  the  band  which  made  this 
courageous  charge  is  quite  well  sampled,  so  to  speak, 
by  the  thirteen  men  who  by  the  efforts  of  the  "Fa- 
neuil  Hall  committee"  subsequently  were  arrested 
and  put  on  trial.  The  mob  seems  to  have  been 
made  up  of  Boston  laborers  and  mechanics,  who, 
intending  merely  to  intimidate  the  Irish  by  a  dem- 
onstration against  this  Catholic  house,  were  led  by 
the  crowd-fever  into  unexpected  violence;  of  brick 
yard  employees  who  had  personal  grudges  against 
the  Convent  and  its  Superior;  of  ignorant  and 
prurient-minded  men  whose  imaginations  had  been 
inflamed  by  foulest  stories  of  monastic  corruption; 
of  friends  of  Theresa  Reed,  who  seems  to  have  had 
power  to  rouse  a  bitter  championship ;  of  bigots  who 
thought  to  do  religion  a  service  by  destroying  one 
of  its  homes;  of  Irish  Protestants,  who  are  prover- 
bially unfriendly  to  their  Catholic  brethren ;  of 
petty  criminals  and  law-breakers,  always  present 
where  there  is  prospect  of  disorder;  and,  finally,  of 
thoughtless  boys,  who  were  there  for  fun.  But,  by 
the  mob-spirit,  all  these  men  and  boys  were  brought 
down  to  one  common  level  of  brute  destructiveness. 

The  first  impulse  of  the  Superior  when  she  saw 
these  demons  coming,  as  she  no  doubt  believed,  to 
kill  her,  was  to  invoke  the  only  shadow  of  law  she 
had  within  her  reach.  With  pitiable  faith  in  the 
power  of  magistracy,  she  thrust  out  from  an  upper 


Destruction   of  the   Ursuline  Convent       135 

window  the  daughter  of  a  Cambridge  judge,  bid- 
ding her  warn  the  mob — which,  however,  was  quite 
heedless  of  her — that  her  father  would  put  them  all 
in  prison.  This  poor  weapon  failing  of  effect,  the 
Superior,  marshalling  the  children  in  their  custom- 
ary two-by-two,  started  toward  the  barred  front 
door,  thinking,  perhaps,  that  a  sight  of  this  terror- 
stricken  flock  might  move  the  mob  to  pity.  But 
this  modern  martyrdom  of  St.  Ursula  was  not  to 
be.  Just  as  Mother  St.  George  reached  the  middle 
landing  there  came  a  tremendous  shower  of  stones, 
breaking  all  the  windows  of  the  lower  story  and 
giving  access  to  the  Superior's  office.  Fortunately 
for  her,  this  room  contained  much  of  value,  includ- 
ing a  large  sum  of  money ;  and  while  the  mob  stop- 
ped to  pillage,  she  had  time  to  take  her  flock  of 
nuns  and  children  down  a  back  stairway  and  out 
into  the  paved  court,  leading  them  thence  into  the 
Convent  garden.  This  garden,  luckily,  was  cut  ofiE 
from  the  front  of  the  building  by  high  fences.  It 
was,  therefore,  quite  deserted,  and  the  poor  fugi- 
tives could  patter  unmolested,  and  in  trembling  si- 
lence, to  the  vicinity  of  the  Convent  tomb,  a  large 
brick  structure  which  the  zeal  of  the  searching  se- 
lectmen had  caused  to  be  opened,  and  in  which, 
doubtless,  the  Superior  intended  to  stand  at  bay. 

What  an  experience  for  those  terrified  women  and 
children,  crouching  in  that  silent  garden  on  that 
hot  August  night!  On  the  one  side,  the  half-opened 
tomb,  more  terrible  to  most  of  them  than  the  riot- 
ers themselves;  on  fhe  other  the  gloomy  building, 
lighted  at  first  dimly  and  fitfully,  as  a  few  of  the 


136  New  England  Conscience 


rioters  with  lanterns  and  firebrands  sought  plunder 
through  the  upper  rooms,  and  then  more  brightly, 
as  the  mass  of  the  mob,  having  searched  the  cellars 
in  vain  for  dungeons  and  instruments  of  torture, 
mounted  from  floor  to  floor,  smashing  the  furni- 
ture, tearing  down  the  curtains,  shivering  the  mir- 
rors, throwing  the  combustibles  into  great  heaps, 
and  flinging  the  solider  articles,  even  pianos  and 
harps,  out  through  the  crashing  windows;  and 
over  all  the  late-rising  moon  flung  weird  tree- 
shadows,  while  the  blazing  tar  barrcU  made  of  the 
hilltop  a  huge  beacon,  reflected  and  multiplied  a 
hundred  times  in  a  wide  circle  of  glowing  brick- 
kilns. 

So  long  as  plunder  and  the  work  of  destruction 
should  keep  the  mob  in  the  building,  its  fugitive 
occupants  were  safe;  but  the  rioters  still  howled 
for  the  Superior,  still  searched  fitfully  for  the  body 
of  the  "Mysterious  Lady,"  and  must  soon  look 
systematically  for  both.  At  this  critical  time — for 
even  had  the  nuns  not  been  paralyzed  with  terror, 
it  would  have  been  impossible  for  them  to  get  the 
fifty  or  sixty  children  over  the  high  board  fence 
which,  shutting  the  world  out,  shut  also  the  fugi- 
tives in — Mr.  Cutter,  the  neighbor  who  had  already 
figured  so  prominently,  came  again  to  the  rescue. 
He  and  the  men  with  him  broke  through  the  fence, 
and,  partly  through  this  opening  and  partly  by  lift- 
ing them  over  the  high  palings,  got  all  the  nuns  and 
such  of  the  pupils  as  had  not  escaped  in  other  direc- 
tions out  of  the  garden  and  down  the  hill  to  the 
Cutter  house.     Here  the  testimony  is  very  conflict- 


Destruction   of  the   Ursuline   Convent       1 37 

ing.  It  is  asserted,  on  the  one  hand,  that  the  fugi- 
tives remained  in  this  house  until  it  seemed  impera- 
tive for  them  to  seek  a  more  distant  shelter;  on  the 
other,  that  the  Superior  refused  to  enter  Mr.  Cut- 
ter's house  at  all,  and  started  across  the  mile  of 
dreary  clay  flats  towards  Winter  Hill,  dragging 
her  tired  charges  after  her.  Whatever  the  facts  as 
to  his  residence,  it  is  certain  that  Mr.  Cutter  in- 
sisted upon  going  with  them  thence  to  find  some 
safe  asylum.  So  this  strange  procession  struck  across 
the  fields  among  the  brick  yards.  Sister  Mary  John 
striding  ahead,  muttering  and  gesticulating;  the 
stronger  nuns  half  dragging,  half  carrying,  the  dy- 
ing novice ;  the  Superior,  stout  and  scant  of  breath, 
always  commanding  a  slower  pace ;  and  the  weeping, 
weary  children,  in  every  state  of  undress,  some  with 
little  more  than  their  nightgowns,  others  with  their 
entire  wardrobe  upon  their  backs,  huddling  behind ; 
the  whole  scene  illuminated  by  the  huge  torch  of  the 
Convent  building,  now  a  mass  of  flames. 

How  Mr.  Cutter  went  from  door  to  door  of  his 
friends,  knocking  in  vain  at  the  seemingly  empty 
houses ;  how  the  good  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Adams,  with 
hospitality,  but  with  deadly  fear  for  their  own 
lives,  took  them  all  in ;  how  the  former,  with  aston- 
ishing presence  of  mind  and  histrionic  ability,  threw 
the  rioters — who  soon  followed,  hounding  the 
Superior — oflF  the  scent  by  feigning  to  have  just 
awakened;  and  how,  as  daylight  came,  the  friends 
of  the  fugitives,  guided  by  Mr.  Cutter,  came  to  the 
rescue  of  the  nuns  and  children,  is  too  long  a  story. 

What  could  have  been  the  journalistic  enterprise 


138  New  England  Conscience 


of  that  day,  which  produced  nothing  more,  the  next 
morning,  than  a  few  lines  of  bald  statement  about 
the  burning  of  the  Convent?  But  the  news  travel- 
ed faster  than  the  newspapers;  and  before  the  da}' 
was  over,  Faneuil  Hall,  that  safety  valve  of  Boston, 
had  seen  a  monster  mass  meeting,  at  which  dis- 
tinguished men,  including  the  eloquent  Harrison 
Gray  Otis,  spoke  in  no  measured  terms,  and  a 
notable  committee,  headed  by  Mayor  Lyman,  was 
appointed  to  bring  the  ringleaders  of  the  mob  to 
justice.  Mass  meetings  were  held  also  in  Cam- 
bridge, Charlestown,  and  other  towns;  the  militia 
was  called  out  to  guard  Catholic  property;  and 
bodies  of  citizens,  under  arms,  patrolled  the  streets 
for  a  week,  ready  to  prevent  new  outrages.  For  it 
had  been  shown  that  even  sober  Boston  could  have 
a  mob ;  and  there  was  no  limit  to  the  fevered  con- 
juring of  imaginary  further  mobs.  Rumors  of 
organized  bodies  of  Irishmen  coming  from  all  over 
the  state  to  burn  and  slaughter  were  rife ;  demon- 
strations and  threats,  counter  demonstrations  and 
counter  threats,  were  hurled  in  newspapers,  by 
hand-bills,  and  by  incipient  mobs,  until  Boston  and 
its  vicinity  was  in  a  whirlwind  of  excitement.  The 
Roman  Catholic  Bishop  Fenwick  and  the  other 
priests  behaved  with  wisdom  and  moderation.  They 
exhorted  their  people  in  most  eloquent  terms  to 
take  no  revenge,  but  to  await  without  misgiving  the 
course  of  aroused  public  opinion  and  the  law. 

The  Faneuil  Hall  committee,  as  has  been  said,  se- 
cured the  arrest  of  thirteen  rioters;  and  a  mass  of 
testimony,  bolstered  by  much  legal  eloquence,  was 


Destruction   of  the   Ursuline  Convent       139 


poured  forth  at  the  several  trials.  But,  while  the 
guilt  of  most  of  the  defendants  was  plain,  the  proof 
against  them  was  conflicting  and  impeachable,  the 
atmosphere  of  the  court  rooms  was  blue  with  bigotry 
and  hate,  the  tales  and  rumors  which  had  fomented 
the  mob  still  had  living  force.  The  verdict,  there- 
fore, was  "not  guilty"  in  every  case  save  one — and 
he  probably  the  least  criminal — young  Marcy,  a  boy 
of  s<'venteen.  who  had  done  nothing  more  heinous 
than  to  sell  the  Bishop's  books  that  night  at  mock 
auction  before  tossing  them  into  the  flames.  At 
the  petition  of  thousands  of  Catholics,  he  was  in  a 
few  months  pardoned.  So  ended  the  famous  Con- 
vent mob. 

Not  really  ended ;  for  many  a  legislature  was 
memorialized  to  make  good  the  money  loss,  placed 
at  not  less  than  fifty  thousand  dollars,  suffered  by 
the  Bishop  and  the  Convent's  pupils.  But  while,  in 
all  cases,  the  committees  of  the  General  Court  re- 
ported that  this  reparation  should  be  made,  the  ap- 
propriation of  the  money  has  never  yet  been  voted ; 
and  for  more  than  forty  years  the  gaunt  ruin  of  the 
Convent  stood  on  its  conspicuous  height,  a  monu- 
ment, left  of  intention  by  its  owners,  to  the  injus- 
tice of  free  Massachusetts. 

The  Convent  site  and  neighborhood  were  long 
ago  transferred  from  Charlestown  to  the  town  of 
Somerville.  Today  Mt.  Benedict  has  been  cut  away 
to  fill  up  the  marshes  along  the  Boston  and  Maine 
Railroad ;  and  far  below  the  quiet  garden  of  the 
Ursulines  will  run  streets  of  houses,  obliterating  the 
last  vestiges  of  this  dramatic  event. 


I40  Nexv  England  Conscience 


VII 

Theodore  Parker 

AT  the  head  of  Lexington  Green  stands 
a  statue  of  a  fine  young  farmer,  his 
musket  ready,  his  whole  form  alert  for 
action.  It  is  called  Capt.  John  Parker, 
but  it  is  not  he;  for  that  modest  leader 
of  the  Minute  Men  died  in  September,  1775,  leav- 
ing no  pictured  or  sculptured  trace  behind.  The 
figure  on  Lexington  Green  is  better  than  a  mere 
portrait.  It  is  an  idealization  of  the  Parker  spirit, 
— the  spirit  of  protest  against  wrong,  the  spirit  of 
popular  championship,  the  spirit  of  democracy.   " 

It  was  an  absurd  spectacle, — that  of  seventy  un- 
disciplined farmers  standing  in  opposition  to  eight 
hundred  of  the  King's  best  men.  Yet  in  its  mean- 
ing and  results  that  fight  at  Lexington  was  one 
of  the  great  battles  of  the  world.  Even  Napoleon 
with  all  his  legions  changed  the  course  of  history 
scarcely  more  than  did  Capt.  John  Parker  and  his 
handful  of  uncouth  men. 

He  and  his  followers  were  untrained  in  mili- 
tarism, but  they  were  not  unschooled.  They  and 
their  forebears  had  been  disciplined  by  frontier  life 
and  warfare  and  had  been  educated  in  that  finest 
academy  of  citizenship — the  New  England  Town 
Meeting.  In  that  school  they  had  learned  to  think 
their  own  thoughts,  to  speak  their  own  minds  and 
to  have  due  regard  for  the  rights  of  everj^ne.    To 


Theodore  Parker 


Theodore  Parker  141 


them,  therefore,  the  pretensions  of  the  ill-advised 
King  George  were  impossible;  and,  since  they  in- 
volved things  dearer  even  than  life,  must  be  op- 
posed, if  need  be,  with  life  itself.  The  seven  men 
who  fell  in  the  dawning  of  April  19th,  the  men 
from  Woburn  and  from  many  other  towns  who 
died  later  in  that  day,  planted  with  their  very  bodies 
the  seeds  of  true  democracy.  Less  than  a  hundred 
years  later  there  was  another  costly  planting;  and  to 
the  end  of  time,  there  must  be  single  martyrs  and 
armies  of  martyrs  for  human  liberty.  High  in  that 
noble  and  blessed  company  stands  Theodore  Parker. 

Poorly  and  obscurely  born,  therefore,  as  he  was, 
Theodore,  as  the  grandson  of  Capt.  John  Parker, 
had  a  unique  inheritance.  Martyrship  and  leader- 
ship were  in  his  blood,  and  noble  accounting  did 
he  render  of  the  splendid  heritage.  Like  Lincoln, 
he  not  only  knew  the  common  people,  he  believed  in 
them,  confident  that  through  their  solid  common 
sense  right  and  truth  are  certain  to  prevail.  There 
is  no  more  significant  phrase  in  American  literature 
than  this  sentence  of  Parker's:  "The  people  arz 
always  true  to  a  good  man  who  truly  trusts  them." 
It  is  as  a  leader  of  the  people  against  injustice, 
against  superstition,  against  ignorance,  against  the 
crushing  and  deadening  weight  of  outworn  conven- 
tions, that  Parker  should  be  judged;  and  it  was  as 
such  a  leader  that  his  great  work  for  the  world  was 
done. 

Moreover,  as  befits  a  genuine  democrat,  Theodore 
Parker  was  intensely  practical.  Profoundly  re- 
ligious, he  never  was  tempted  into  mysticism;  lev- 


142  New  England  Conscience 


ing  to  preach,  he  never  became  lost  in  the  forest 
of  his  own  words;  an  ardent  reformer,  he  yet  never 
overlooked  the  long,  steep,  weary  road  which  lies 
between  the  conception  and  the  realization  of  re- 
form. Furthermore,  he  possessed  what  so  many 
leaders  and  reformers  lack, — that  saving  sense  of 
humor,  which  shows  a  man  the  world-wide  differ- 
ence between  the  fruitful  idea  and  the  merely  gro- 
tesque idea  in  his  striving  to  improve  the  world. 

A  transcendentalist,  he  yet  kept  his  feet  always 
on  the  solid  earth  of  human  experience;  a  near 
neighbor,  while  pastor  of  the  West  Roxbury  Church, 
of  Brook  Farm,  he  was  never  deceived  as  to  the 
inevitable  end  of  that  Utopia;  a  strong  advocate 
of  temperance,  he  did  not  hesitate  to  denounce  the 
folly  of  attempting  to  enforce  total  abstinence  by 
law;  welcomed  in  the  best  intellectual  society  of 
America  and  Europe,  he  never  separated  himself 
from,  or  lost  faith  in,  the  power  and  the  instinctive 
grip  upon  fundamental  truth  of  the  slower  minds 
of  the  great  common  people. 

It  was  sneeringly  said  that  his  Music  Hall  audi- 
ences were  made  up  not  of  the  "best"  persons,  but  of 
butchers,  bakers,  and  small  tradesmen.  But  it  was 
in  just  that  type  of  audience  that  Parker  rejoiced, 
for  in  influencing  them,  as  he  so  profoundly  did,  he 
knew  that  he  was  exerting  a  power  that  would  tell. 
It  was  these  men  and  women,  he  appreciated,  who 
would  make  the  laws,  who  would  reform  methods  of 
philanthropy,  who  would  dictate  the  education  of  the 
next  generation,  who  would  liberalize  the  churches, 
and  who  would,  if  necessary,  fight  that  fight  for  the 


Theodore  Parker  143 

slaves  which  he  did  not  live  to  see,  but  which  he 
foresaw  must  come. 

In  no  direction  did  the  practical  quality  of  his 
mind  appear  more  plainly  than  in  his  dealings  with 
the  complex  problems  of  society.  He  was  impatient 
of  talk  and  was  always  eager,  not  only  to  work  him- 
self, but  to  get  others  busy.  "I  should  like,"  he 
writes,  "to  preach  a  sermon  on  John  Augustus,  one 
of  the  most  extraordinary  men  I  ever  knew;  he  cre- 
ated a  new  department  of  humanity  and  loved  the 
unlovely."  .  .  .  "Ministers  preach  benevolence 
and  beneficence;  he  went  and  did  it.  How  many 
drunkards  did  he  save  from  the  pit  of  ruin !  How 
many  thieves  and  robbers  and  other  infamous  per- 
sons did  he  help  out  of  their  wickedness!"  John 
Augustus,  whom  he  thus  eulogizes,  was  a  shoemaker 
in  Lexington,  who  for  many  years  did  all  these 
things  in  the  most  unostentatious  way,  and  who  was 
among  the  first,  moreover,  to  save  youth  by  lying 
in  wait  for  discharged  boy  prisoners  and  finding  them 
honest  work  to  do.  It  was  that  kind  of  personal, 
practical  philanthropy  which  appealed  to  Mr.  Park- 
er, and  he  was  never  so  happy  as  when  he  had  or- 
ganized, within  his  parish  or  without,  some  group 
of  men  and  women  for  the  actual,  day-by-day  work 
of  social  rescue  and  reform. 

"Religion,"  Parker  said,  "rises  early  every  morn- 
ing and  works  all  day."  That  was  the  type  of  his 
religion,  his  philanthropy,  his  labors  for  social  better- 
ment ;  and  all  three  of  these  activities  were  inter- 
mingled in  every  thought  and  endeavor  of  his  life. 
It  is  difficult,  therefore,   to  disentangle  one  of  his 


144  New  England  Conscience 

interests  from  another,  and  to  say:  "Here  he  was  a 
preacher,  here  an  anti-slavery  worker,  here  a  social 
reformer,"  He  was  religious  through  and  through, 
so  that  every  act  was  to  him  an  office  of  religion ; 
while  every  religious  aspiration,  he  believed,  should 
take  shape  in  deeds.  He  was  so  filled  with  this 
moral  zeal  that  there  was  no  work  for  the  good  of 
the  community  or  of  mankind  in  general  in  which 
he  did  not  take  a  lively  interest  and  generally  a 
leading  part.  As  his  biographer,  John  Weiss,  truly 
says,  the  period  before  the  Civil  War  was  one  of 
intense  moral  awakening,  making  men  to  be  extraj 
ordinarily  alive,  not  simply  to  the  problems  of  sljfc- 
very,  but  to  those  of  prison-reform,  temperancej 
peace,  Sunday  observance,  and  to  the  general  res^ 
cue,  as  Parker  phrases  it,  of  the  "perishing  classes.'; 
All  these  moral  problems  were  discussed,  moreover, 
not  simply  in  pulpits,  but  on  lyceum  platforms,  and 
with  a  fervor  on  the  part  of  speakers  and  a  breath- 
less attention  on  the  part  of  audiences  today  difficult 
to  understand.  It  was  true  missionary  zeal  that  led 
the  lecturers  of  ante-bellum  days  to  undergo  such 
hardships  as  they  did  for  mere  pittances  of  pay. 
Slow  and  infrequent  trains,  without  sleeping  cars, 
endless  waits  at  dreary  junctions,  nights  of  tor- 
ment in  unspeakable  country  hotels,  long  drives 
through  cold  winter  evenings,  ill-ventilated  halls, 
and  other  almost  incredible  discomforts  were  the 
portion  of  every  lyceum  speaker,  and  to  a  semi-in- 
valid like  Theodore  Parker  these  hardships  must 
have  been  almost  unbearable.  Yet  he  did  his  full 
share  of  lecturing,  in  addition  to  the  heavy  duties 


Theodore  Parker  145 


of  preaching,  of  pastoral  work  and  of  writing,  until 
his  physicians  actually  forced  him  to  flee  to  warmer 
climates  in  a  vain  efifort  to  escape  impending  death. 
And  whether  working  beyond  his  strength,  or  wheth- 
er chafing  in  enforced  idleness,  he  never  complained, 
never  lost  his  wonderful  sweetness  and  sunniness  of 
soul.  He  laments,  it  is  true,  the  fact  that  he  should 
have  been  able  to  do  so  little ! — he  who  performed,  in 
his  fifty  years  of  life,  the  work  of  six  ordinary  men ; 
and  after  tw^elve  years  of  preaching  he  regrets  that 
the  crisis  of  slavery  should  have  forced  him  to  turn 
aside  from  his  plan  to  devote  his  life  to  the  "perish- 
ing classes."  All  that  he  did  do,  moreover,  he  re- 
garded merely  as  the  payment  of  a  just  debt  to 
society.  He  who  had  been  obliged  to  educate  him- 
self in  the  intervals  of  heavy  work  upon  a  farm;  he 
who  had  been  so  poor  that  he  could  not  take  the 
degree  at  Harvard,  though  he  passed  all  its  exami- 
nations; he  who  was  reviled  as  a  heretic  and  shun- 
ned as  a  friend  of  the  despised  "Nigger;"  he  whose 
life  was  frequently  threatened  and  was  always  in 
danger;  he  who  found  himself  cut  off  in  the  zenith 
of  life  by  a  disease  directly  brought  on  by  his  la- 
bors for  his  fellowmen ;  he,  at  the  beginning  of  his 
first   real  vacation,  writes  as  follows: — 

"I  am  now  to  spend  a  year  in  foreign  travel.  In 
this  year  I  shall  earn  nothing;  neither  my  food,  nor 
my  clothes,  nor  even  the  paper  I  write  on.  Of 
course  I  shall  increase  my  debt  to  the  world  by 
every  potato  I  eat,  and  each  mile  I  travel.  How 
shall  I  repay  the  debt?  Only  by  extraordinary 
efforts    after    I    return.      I    hope    to    continue    my 


146  New  England  Conscience 

present  plans  in  this  way: 

"i.  To  work  in  behalf  of  temperance,  education, 
a  change  in  the  social  fabric,  so  that  the  weak 
shall  not  be  slaves  of  the  strong. 

"2.  To  show  that  religion  belongs  to  man's  na- 
ture, that  it  demands  piety,  morality  and  theology. 

"3.  To  write  an  introduction  to  the  New  Testa- 
ment. 

"4.  To  write  a  historical  development  of  religion 
in  the  history  of  man. 

"5.     Such  other  works  as  may  become  necessary. 

"In  this  way  I  hope  to  work  out  my  debt." 

We  know  how  he  paid  his  debt  in  the  coin  of  anti- 
slavery  service,  how  he  minted  his  brain  into  the 
gold  of  scholarly  thought  and  writing.  How  did 
he  discharge  that  alleged  obligation  under  the  head 
which  he  first  enumerates, — that  of  working  "in 
behalf  of  temperance,  education  and  a  change  in 
the  social  fabric?"  In  these  and  in  many  other 
social  directions  he  was  a  glowing  and  stimulating 
force ;  and  what  he  did  was,  as  I  have  already  said, 
intensely  practical.  He  labored  activelv  for  tem- 
perance in  flaming  words  full  of  graphic  appeal ; 
but  it  was  a  practical,  not  a  fanatical,  temperance 
that  he  zealously  preached.  He  organized  an  active 
society  for  the  actual  street  rescue  of  friendless, 
tempted  girls.  He  studied  education  at  first  hand 
by  long  and  faithful  service  on  school  committees, 
and  he  contributed  many  an  important  thought  and 
plan  to  that  slowly  growing  science.  He  formulat- 
ed methods  of  public  and  private  charity  that  an- 
ticipated the  best  ideas  of  to-day.     And  above  all. 


Theodore  Parker  147 


he  forwarded  true  democracy,  not  by  pulling  the 
social  and  intellectual  leaders  down,  but  by  raising 
the  great  common  people  up.  "The  people  are 
always  true  to  a  good  man  who  truly  trusts  them." 
He  trusted  them  and,  despite  the  calumnies  heaped 
upon  him  for  his  heresies  and  his  love  of  the  black 
man,  a  great  body  of  the  people  trusted  him,  follow- 
ed him,  and,  after  his  untimely  death,  carried  for- 
ward his  work  for  the  liberalizing  of  thought,  for 
the  broadening  of  education,  for  the  systematizing 
of  philanthropy,  for  the  equalizing  of  opportunity, 
for  the  rescue  of  a  nation  of  so-called  freemen 
from  the  curse  of  slavery.  He  knew  what  de- 
mocracy means,  be  believed  in  democracy,  and  he 
felt  certain  that  if  he  placed  his  precious  ideas  and 
aspirations  in  the  keeping  of  the  common  people, 
those  thoughts  and  hopes  would  come,  as  fifty  years 
later  they  are  slowly  coming,  to  full  fruition,  both 
in  the  lives  of  men  and  in  the  conduct  of  societv. 


148  New  England  Conscience 


VIII 

Abraham  Lincoln 

IT  is  a  waste  of  time,  most  persons  will  agree, 
to  try  to  prove  that  Lincoln  was  a  sort  of 
supernatural  being  sent  to  save  the  United 
States.  It  is  doubtful,  even,  if  he  should  be 
called  a  political  genius.  He  appeared  at 
that  supreme  crisis  because,  as  all  history  shows, 
every  really  great  national  need  brings  to  the  front 
its  organizers  and  true  leaders  of  men. 

The  wonderful  thing  about  Lincoln  was  not  the 
strange  chain  of  events  which  brought  him  to  the 
presidency,  not  the  astonishing  ability  with  which 
he,  a  novice  in  war,  met  the  terrible  demands  of 
those  four  years;  it  was  the  homely  skill,  the  dogged 
persistency,  the  serene  courage  by  which  he  lifted 
himself  out  of  the  squalor  of  a  "poor-white"  home 
up  to  the  largest  position  of  personal  responsibility 
that  has  come  to  any  ruler  in  human  history. 

Every  one  is  familiar,  of  course,  with  the  succes- 
sive steps  of  his  extraordinary  career;  but  to  under- 
stand that  career,  it  is  necessary  to  put  aside  the 
glosses  and  glamors  which  hero-worshipping  biog- 
raphers have  thrown  about  Abraham  Lincoln,  and 
to  regard  him  simply  as  a  man  of  the  people  who 
used  his  knowledge  of,  and  his  power  with,  the  plain 
people  to  give  him,  in  the  last  years  of  his  life,  moral 
command  over  the  supremest  crisis  in  the  history  of 
government.      There   is   no   solid    ground    for   the 


Abraham  Lincoln  149 


catchpenny  phrases:  "Lincoln  the  Inspired,"  "Lin- 
coln the  Saint,"  "Lincoln  the  Genius."  He  was 
none  of  these; — he  \\as  simply  "Lincoln  the  Man." 

He  was  born  in  a  poor-white  cabin  in  Kentucky 
— and  I  use  the  term,  "poor-white,"  advisedly.  It 
is  true  that  his  ancestors  were  sturdy  Puritan  fol)c 
from  Hingham,  Massachusetts,  but  it  does  not  take 
more  than  two  generations,  if  conditions  are  un- 
favorable, for  the  best  Puritan  stock — outwardly, 
at  any  rate — to  degenerate ;  and  there  seems  no  real 
reason  to  believe  that  Lincoln's  father  was  anything 
better  than  a  poor-white  loafer  married  to  a  woman 
superior  indeed  to  him,  but  very  little  superior  to 
the  rest  of  the  roving,  shiftless  population  which 
was  once  so  numerous  in  the  Western  and  Southern 
Alleghanies.  He  had  one  great  advantage,  of  course, 
in  that  for  generations  his  people  had  been  pioneers, 
had  lived  rough  lives  in  the  open,  and  had  develop- 
ed a  largeness  of  limb  and  a  strength  of  constitu- 
tion which  Abraham  Lincoln  inherited  and  which 
were  at  the  foundation  of  his  great  career. 

When  Lincoln  was  seven  his  shiftless  father  shift- 
ed to  Southern  Indiana,  where,  two  years  later, 
the  boy's  mother  died,  and  whence  the  father  went 
back  to  Kentucky  for  a  second  wife.  She  was  a 
thrifty  and  intelligent  widow,  and,  as  Lincoln's 
step-mother,  was  a  genuine  good  angel  in  his  life. 
For  she  made  a  decent  home  for  him,  smoothed 
down  his  uncouthness,  and  not  only  urged  him,  but 
helped  him  so  far  as  she  could,  to  get  some  knowl- 
edge of  books  and  to  develop  those  powers  which 
had  thus  far  been  asleep  within  him.     In  all,  how- 


I50  New  England  Conscience 


ever,  his  schooling  did  not  cover  a  single  year. 

From  Southern  Indiana  his  father  floated  on 
unpaid  mortgages  into  Central  Illinois,  which,  from 
Abraham's  twenty-first  year  until  he  went  to  Wash- 
ington in  1 86 1,  was — with  the  exception  of  one 
term  in  Congress — the  theatre  of  Lincoln's  dra- 
matic and  epoch-making  career. 

From  earliest  childhood  the  boy  worked,  not 
only  for  his  father,  but  for  others  to  whom  his  labor 
was  hired  out,  and  he  worked  effectively,  because  of 
his  health  and  strength,  at  whatever  he  undertook. 
The  tradition  regarding  him,  however,  is  that  he 
was  lazy,  which  means  probably  that  he  preferred  to 
read,  think  and  dream  rather  than  to  split  rails,  hoe 
corn,  and  feed  the  pigs.  Those  readings,  especially 
of  a  volume  of  the  Statutes  of  Indiana,  which  came 
into  his  hands,  and  those  dreams,  which  must  have 
been  of  a  political  career,  led  him  after  more  or 
less  adventure  as  a  flatboat  hand  on  the  Mississippi 
in  the  Black  Hawk  War,  as  a  most  incompetent 
storekeeper  in  a  collapsed  "boom"  village,  and  as  a 
deputy  surveyor,  to  take  up,  when  he  was  about 
twenty-five  years  old,  the  study  of  the  law. 

Preparation  for  a  legal  career  at  the  frontier  was 
not  severe,  and  Lincoln's  knowledge  when  he  was 
admitted  to  the  bar,  and  established  himself  at 
Springfield,  in  1837,  must  have  been  extremely 
scanty.  But  he  possessed  to  an  extraordinary  degree 
that  main  reliance  of  even  the  most  learned  lawyer, 
— knowledge  of  human  nature.  This,  together  with 
his  intellect  and  his  homely  but  racy  wit,  gave  him 
a  command  of  juries,  and  attracted  to  him  clients 


Abraham  Lincoln  1 51 

for  whom  the  profoundest  knowledge  of  legal  mat- 
ters would  have  counted  as  nothing. 

In  viewing  Lincoln's  rapid  rise  into  political 
prominence  in  Illinois,  one  must  not  forget  that  in 
a  frontier  community  men  are  so  shut  off  from  other 
things  of  civilization  that  politics  becomes  a  leading 
interest.  Moreover,  Illinois,  perhaps  because  it  is 
half  Yankee  and  half  Southern,  has  always  been  a 
rich  field  for  political  discussion  and  for  the  rearing 
of  that  type  of  man  to  whom  politics  is  the  breath 
of  life.  In  such  an  atmosphere,  Lincoln,  who  had 
extraordinary  political  shrewdness,  who  loved  the 
game  of  politics,  and  who  had  far  higher  visions 
than  even  he  himself  appreciated,  had  also  personal 
qualifications  which  made  the  step  from  obscurity 
to  local  fame  comparatively  easy.  In  the  rough 
and  tumble  of  frontier  elections,  he  could  not  only 
hold  his  own  with  his  tongue,  but  he  could  whip 
any  man  who  dared  to  tamper  with  him.  He  was 
so  close  to  the  soil  that  he  had  no  class  prejudices  to 
overcome.  His  very  ugliness  and  awkwardness, 
coupled  with  the  keenness  of  his  jests  and  the  raci- 
ness  of  his  stories,  made  his  public  appearances  real 
entertainments  for  a  people  hungry  to  be  amused. 
Above  all,  he  was  honest  through  and  through,  and 
such  downright,  courageous  honesty  as  his  is  certain 
to  command  respect,  and,  if  it  be  coupled,  as  it  was 
in  Lincoln,  with  common  sense,  is  equally  certain 
to  secure  power. 

His  unswerving  honesty  with  himself  and  with 
everybody  else,  and  the  clearness  of  his  political 
vision,  led  him,  moreover,  to  identify  himself  with 


152  New  England  Conscience 


the  minority, — and  therefore  reform — party  in  Illi- 
nois, that  of  the  Whigs.  Being  a  minority  candi- 
date, his  first  efforts  at  political  office  were,  of 
course,  vain;  but  his  physical  and  mental  strength 
and  his  power  to  win  men,  soon  brought  him  what 
was  really  a  personal  victory,  as  representative  to 
the  Illinois  legislature.  He  made,  however,  no 
great  impression  there,  except  as  a  member  of  the 
small  group  of  giants  known  as  the  "Long  Nine," 
who  succeeded  in  having  the  Capitol  of  Illinois 
transferred  to  Springfield.  It  is  difficult  to  point 
out  just  the  moment  when  Lincoln  emerged  from 
obscurity  as  an  acknowledged  leader  of  politics  in 
his  adopted  state;  but  the  fact  in  his  career  which 
brought  him  national  fame  and  which,  therefore, 
led  to  his  nomination  for  the  presidency,  was  his 
opposition  to  Stephen  A.  Douglas,  the  man  who  for 
the  fifteen  years  preceding  i860,  was  the  idol  of  the 
Democratic  party. 

Of  all  the  strange  coincidences  in  Lincoln's  life, 
none  is  more  singular  than  the  linking  of  his  for- 
tunes with  those  of  Douglas.  Meeting,  as  young 
men,  in  the  city  of  Springfield,  the  one  hailing,  as 
the  Westerners  say,  from  Kentucky,  and  the  other 
from  Vermont,  these  two  strong  individualities 
came  into  early  clashing  over  the  affections  of  that 
Miss  Todd  who  was  afterwards  to  become  Mrs. 
Lincoln.  But  they  were  political  rivals  also,  in  a 
contest  which  was  to  last  more  than  twenty  years. 
Douglas  had,  however,  every  apparent  superiority. 
He  was  scholarly,  well-trained  as  a  lawyer,  of  agree- 
able, even  handsp^e  presence,  and  an  early  leader 


Abraham  Lincoln  153 


in  that  party,  the  Democratic,  which  was  on  the  top 
wave  in  both  state  and  nation.  With  these  ad- 
vantages he  ran,  of  course,  far  and  fast  ahead  of 
Lincoln,  so  that,  at  the  time  when  the  latter  was 
only  an  obscure  member  of  the  Illinois  legislature, 
Douglas  was  not  only  Senator  in  the  National  Con- 
gress but  was  so  much  a  leader  in  Washington  as 
to  be  regarded  as  in  logical  succession  for  the  presi- 
dency. Every  year,  however,  Douglas'  position  be- 
came more  difficult,  for  he  had  to  steer  a  safe  course 
between  the  fire-eating  Southerners  who  were  forc- 
ing an  ever  wider  extension  of  slavery,  and  the  rap- 
idly growing  northern  sentiment,  which  demanded 
that  the  "peculiar  institution"  should  not  be  carried 
north  of  Mason  and  Dixon's  line.  At  this  vulner- 
able point  in  Douglas'  power  and  popularity,  Lin- 
coln struck  again  and  again  until  he  finally  gave 
him  his  political  death-blow. 

Lincoln's  famous  war  of  words  with  Douglas,  it 
should  be  emphasized,  was  not  over  the  abolition  of 
slavery,  but  was  solely  over  the  question  of  the  ex- 
tension of  slavery.  As  far  back  as  the  making  of 
the  Constitution,  slavery  had  been  a  troublesome 
issue ;  but  as  that  great  document  had  to  be  a  suc- 
cession of  compromises  in  order  to  get  ratified  at  all, 
this  burning  problem  was  then  smothered.  It 
smouldered  until  1820,  when  it  was  again  quieted, 
men  thought  forever,  by  the  Missouri  Compromise, 
through  which  Missouri  was  admitted  as  a  slave 
state  on  the  agreement  that  slavery  should  not  be 
extended  north  of  36°  30'  or  west  of  that  State. 
Thereafter,   in   order   to   keep   the  balance  of  the 


154  New  England  Conscience 

Senate  equal,  states  were  admitted  in  pairs,  a  south- 
ern and  a  northern  one  together.  The  supply  of 
northern  territory,  however,  was  so  much  greater, 
that,  to  maintain  this  balance,  the  Southerners 
brought  on  the  Mexican  War  and  the  annexation 
of  Texas,  a  step  which  made  the  slavery  question 
flame  up  again.  It  was  quenched  for  a  time  by  the 
Clay  Compromise  of  1850,  which  tried  to  get  rid 
of  the  slavery  question  mainly  by  ignoring  it,  and 
by  the  passage  of  the  Fugitive  Slave  Law. 

Meanwhile  Lincoln  had  built  up  a  fair  practice  in 
the  city  of  Springfield,  first  with  Stuart  as  his 
partner,  then  with  Logan,  and  finally  with  Hern- 
don  ;  had  served,  as  the  only  Whig  from  Illinois,  in 
the  30th  Congress;  and  had  so  offended  his  con- 
stituents by  his  honest  attitude  towards  the  Mexi- 
can War,  that  he  had  failed  of  re-election.  This 
was  in  1848,  and  during  the  next  six  years  he  set- 
tled into  the  pursuit  of  the  law,  seemingly  but 
mildly  interested  in  the  great  game  of  politics.  Then 
in  1854  came  the  Kansas-Nebraska  bill,  with  what 
was  in  effect  a  repeal  of  the  Missouri  Compromise, 
and  the  whole  question  of  slavery  blazed  up  again. 
The  Whigs,  free-soilers,  and  anti-Nebraska  demo- 
crats coalesced  into  the  Republican  party,  Lincoln 
was  righteously  inflamed,  and  he  was  at  once  pushed 
forward  as  the  Republican  champion  to  oppose 
Douglas,  who,  as  chairman  of  the  Committee  on 
Territories  in  the  United  States  Senate,  had  con- 
trived this  infamous  piece  of  legislation. 

During  those  succeeding  six  years,  Lincoln  and 
Douglas  pursued  one  another  hotly  in  a  race,  first 


Abraham  Lincoln  155 

for  the  Senatorship,  and  then  for  the  Presidency; 
their  main  theme  of  contention  being  slavery.  The 
most  dramatic  as  well  as  the  most  important  phase 
in  this  fight  of  political  giants  was  the  series  of 
debates  that  opened  the  campaign  for  the  U.  S. 
Senatorship.  Douglas  had  been  nominated  by  the 
Democrats,  and  Lincoln  by  the  Republicans,  and  in 
accepting  his  nomination,  Lincoln  had  used  those 
fateful  words,  "A  house  divided  against  itself  can- 
not stand,"  which  placed  squarely  before  the  country 
the  real  issue  between  the  North  and  South.  Lin- 
coln challenged  Douglas  to  a  series  of  joint  debates, 
seven  in  number,  which  took  place  during  the  hot 
summer  of  1858  in  different  towns  of  Illinois.  Lin- 
coln lost  the  Senatorship,  but  he  did  it  deliberately 
by  trapping  his  opponent  into  a  statement  which 
would  gain  for  Douglas  the  temporary  support  of 
the  legislature  of  Illinois,  but  which  was  sure  so 
to  split  the  Democratic  Party  that  the  presidency 
would  be  thrown  into  the  hands  of  the  Republicans. 
Lincoln  never  did  a  shrewder  thing  than  when,  in 
the  course  of  those  debates,  he  made  Douglas  assert, 
in  regard  to  the  famous  Dred  Scott  decision — a  de- 
cree of  the  Supreme  Court  which  declared  the  Mis- 
souri Compromise  unconstitutional — that  since  slav- 
ery could  not  exist  if  it  were  not  protected  by  the 
local  police,  a  state  really  had  the  power  to  exclude 
slavery  by  refusing  to  protect  it.  This  flimsy  argu- 
ment satisfied  Douglas'  constituents  temporarily, 
but  it  wrecked  the  Democratic  party,  the  extreme 
Southerners  refusing  to  support  Douglas  after  he 
had  thus,  as  they  said,  deserted  and  betrayed  them. 


156  New  England  Conscience 

The  Democratic  nominating,  convention  of  i860 
split  squarely  in  two;  and  while  Douglas  was  nom- 
inated by  the  Northern  Democrats,  Breckenridge 
was  chosen,  in  a  rump  convention,  by  the  South- 
erners. This  made  it  certain  that  the  Republican 
candidate  would  be  elected.  Intense  interest  cen- 
tered, therefore,  in  the  Republican  convention,  which 
was  held,  in  Chicago,  May  16,  i860.  The  three 
logical  candidates  were  Seward  of  New  York,  the 
acknowledged  leader  of  the  party,  Chase  of  Ohio, 
and  Lincoln  of  Illinois.  Seward  led  on  the  first 
ballot,  but  had  not  a  majority.  Shrewd  trading  on 
the  part  of  Lincoln's  managers  brought  him  almost 
even  with  Seward  on  the  second  ballot ;  and  on  the 
third  he  forged  so  far  ahead  that  Ohio,  by  trans- 
ferring four  votes,  gave  him  the  nomination.  By 
so  narrow  a  chance  as  this  was  the  Union  saved ; 
for,  had  Seward  been  nominated,  it  is  humanly  cer- 
tain that  compromise  would  have  followed  com- 
promise until  a  permanent  division  of  the  United 
States  would  have  been  the  only  way  out.  A  split- 
ting between  North  and  South  would  have  doubt- 
less been  followed  by  other  divisions,  until  we  would 
have  become  a  second  Central  America. 

In  November,  i860,  Lincoln  was  elected;  and 
this  choice  meant  the  secession  of  South  Carolina 
and  the  other  cotton  states.  Between  November, 
i860,  and  his  inauguration  in  March,  1861,  was 
the  most  critical  period  in  all  our  history;  for  the 
feeble  and  utterly  discredited  Buchanan  could  do 
nothing,  even  had  he  wished,  to  stay  the  preparation 
for  war  and   the  consolidation  of   those   Southern 


Abraham  Lincoln 


Abraham   Lincoln  157 

states,  and  the  transfer  to  their  forts  and  arsenals 
of  a  great  stock  of  federal  arms  and  ammunition. 
All  the  other  great  leaders  of  the  Republican  party, 
meanwhile,  were  preaching  compromise  and  conces- 
sion, were  urging  peace  at  any  price,  and  were 
openly  flouting  Lincoln,  who,  helpless  to  act  until 
the  4th  of  March,  could  only  iterate  and  reiterate 
his  determination  to  make  no  compromise  with 
slavery,  to  give  no  aid  and  comfort  to  disunion. 
Had  he  yielded  one  inch,  the  South  would  have 
been  master  of  the  situation.  As  it  was,  six  states, 
in  December  and  January,  seceded,  and  on  February 
18,  1861,  set  up  the  Confederate  Government  with 
Jefferson  Davis  as  its  President. 

At  last  the  terrible  four  months  were  over,  Lin- 
coln had  reached  Washington  without  being  assas- 
sinated, and  in  his  inaugural  had  made  clear  the 
single  present  issue  between  North  and  South, — the 
issue  of  Union.  Simply  and  quietly  the  President 
declared  that  "no  State  can  lawfully  get  out  of  the 
Union"  and  that  he  would  "hold,  occupy  and  possess 
the  places  belonging  to  the  Government."  This 
meant  war;  but  neither  section  wanted  to  begin. 
The  crucial  point  was  Fort  Sumter,  in  the  harbor 
of  Charleston,  South  Carolina,  where  Major  Ander- 
son, with  a  handful  of  troops,  was  virtually  in  a 
state  of  siege.  To  succor  him  meant  the  begin- 
ning of  real  hostilities;  to  abandon  him  meant  sur- 
render to  the  Confederacy.  Lincoln  took  the  first 
alternative,  notified  the  Southern  commander  that 
he  would  send  provisions  to  Anderson,  and,  as  a 
result,   Sumter  was  fired  on  and,  just  four  years 


158  New  England  Conscience     . 

before  Lincoln's  death,  this  most  bloody  and  fateful 
of  civil  wars  began. 

In  entering  upon  the  Civil  War,  Lincoln  ex- 
hibited in  the  highest  degree  not  only  that  political 
wisdom  for  which  he  was  so  conspicuous,  but  also 
a  serene  confidence  in  the  outcome  of  the  conflict 
that  seems  incredible.  For  he  deliberately  brought 
together  in  his  cabinet  elements  which,  to  a  less 
far-seeing  man,  would  have  seemed  to  make  political 
harmony  impossible.  As  Secretary  of  State  he  ap- 
pointed Seward,  his  chief  rival  for  the  presidency 
and  a  man  who  had  never  hesitated  to  show  his 
supreme  contempt  for  Lincoln's  powers;  as  Secre- 
tary' of  the  Treasury  he  appointed  Chase,  his  sec- 
ond most  formidable  rival ;  and,  after  Cameron  had 
proved  himself  incompetent  as  Secretary  of  War, 
he  invited  to  that  most  important  of  oflSces  Stan- 
ton, an  arrogant,  overbearing  man  who  had  de- 
nounced and  traduced  Lincoln  scurrilously  from  the 
day  of  that  President's  nomination.  He  put  in  Blair,  a 
southerner,  though  opposed  to  disunion,  as  postmaster 
general,  and  filled  the  other  cabinet  offices  with 
heads  of  factions.  Moreover,  a  majority  of  these 
men  had  formerly  been  Democrats,  while  Lincoln 
himself  had  been  a  Whig;  and  the  only  thing  upon 
which,  in  the  beginning,  this  strange  official  family 
seems  to  have  agreed  is  in  believing  Lincoln  utterly 
incompetent  for  the  work  ahead  of  him.  How  con- 
scious the  President  must  have  been  of  his  own 
power  and  of  the  righteousness  of  his  cause  to  dare 
to  make  this  bold  political  stroke!  And  what 
magnificent  politics,  in  the  high  sense  of  the  word. 


Abraham  Lincoln  159 


it  was!  For  by  taking  his  chief  political  rivals 
into  his  cabinet,  he  stopped  them  from  heading 
cabals  and  coalitions  against  him  ;  by  including  the 
chief  intellectual  leaders  of  both  parties  he  made 
sure  that  those  brains  should  be  used  for  him  in- 
stead of  against  him ;  by  taking  men  of  dififerent 
parties  and  factions  he  made  sure  not  only  of  hold- 
ing those  factions,  but  also  of  stimulating  a  healthy 
rivalry.  Only  a  man  of  extraordinary  mental  and 
moral  courage  would  have  dared,  however,  to  take 
a  step  that,  if  unsuccessful,  would  have  wrecked 
him,  the  party,  the  government  and  the  Country 
itself. 

No  one  today  needs,  of  course,  to  be  told,  in  de- 
tail, of  the  Civil  War;  but  we  do  need  to  be  re- 
minded that,  until  the  Battle  of  Gettysburg,  it 
vvas,  for  the  Union  side,  a  losing  conflict.  Even  af- 
ter that  invasion  of  the  North  was  stopped,  there 
was  many  a  day  when  the  fate  of  the  Union  hung 
in  the  balance,  until  the  summer  of  1864,  when 
Sherman  divided  the  South  by  his  march  to  the 
sea,  and  Grant  began  his  scientific  investment  of  the 
Confederate  capital.  And  at  every  hour  was  Lin- 
coln confronted  by  the  danger  of  foreign  alliance 
with  the  Confederacy,  a  step  that,  unless  check- 
mated by  general  European  war,  might  have  been 
fatal  to  the  Northern  cause.  Naturally  of  a  most 
melancholy  and  brooding  temperament,  the  Presi- 
dent had,  nevertheless,  in  order  to  avert  national 
panic,  to  appear — publicly,  at  least — at  all  times 
optimistic,  confident,  certain  of  the  fortunate  out- 
come of  the  war.    And  he  had  to  be  this  in  face  of 


i6o  New  England  Conscience 


difficulties  scarcely  to  be  imagined. 

The  country  had  no  such  resources  as  it  has  to- 
day; it  was  peculiarly  poor  because  just  recovering 
from  the  distressing  panic  of  1857.  The  very  fact 
— glorious  as  it  was — that  the  flower  of  Northern 
youth  went  to  the  front,  made  the  difficulty  of  or- 
ganizing an  army  great,  since  either  they  all  wanted 
to  be  officers  or  else  their  very  possession  of  brains 
made  it  hard  to  mold  them  into  those  unthinking 
parts  of  a  machine  which  an  efficient  rank  and  file 
must  be.  And  the  task  of  building  up  a  great  fight- 
ing machine  was  made  ten  times  more  difficult  by 
the  fact  that  the  spoils  system — in  which,  by  the 
nature  of  his  political  education,  Lincoln  believed 
— was  rampant  at  Washington.  Therefore  every 
appointment,  every  contract,  had  to  be  considered 
not  simply  on  its  merits,  but  also  with  regard  to  its 
political  effect ;  and  the  days  and  nights  of  the 
great  leader,  which  should  have  been  sacred  to  the 
working  out  of  the  vast  national  problems,  must  be 
largely  wasted  in  stormy  interviews  with  place- 
hunters,  spoilsmen,  greedy  contractors  and  their  sub- 
servient Congressmen.  The  resulting  scandals  we 
would  forget  except  as  they  threw  added  sorrows 
and  burdens  upon  Abraham  Lincoln. 

And  the  advice  that  he  received ! — beginning  with 
the  thinly  veiled  orders  and  demands  of  his  own 
cabinet  and  going  down  to  the  wise  recommenda- 
tions of  the  remotest  cross-roads  grocery.  Every- 
body except  the  President  knew  just  how  to  end 
the  war,  and  told  him  so.  But  his  patience,  his 
humility,  his  courtesy  were  limitless;    and   it  was 


Abraham  Lincoln  l6l 


only  when  he  felt  absolutely  sure,  that  he  went 
straight  ahead  regardless  of  every  obstacle  and  every 
contrary'  adviser.  It  was  only  seldom  that  he  an- 
swered as  he  did  the  delegation  of  magnates  from 
New  York  who,  telling  him  how  many  millions 
they  represented,  practically  ordered  him  at  once 
to  build  some  sort  of  vessel  strong  enough  to  pro- 
tect New  York  against  that  new  engine  of  destruc- 
tion, the  famous  Merrimac.  "Gentlemen,"  re- 
plied Lincoln,  "if  I  were  as  wise  as  you  think  you 
are,  and  if  I  were  as  rich  as  you  say  you  are,  and  if 
I  were  as  scared  as  I  see  you  are,  I  would  build 
that  vessel  mj'self  and  make  a  present  of  it  to  the 
government;"  whereupon  he  turned  on  his  heel 
without  another  word. 

Lincoln  was  the  very  spirit  of  democracy,  was 
the  personification  of  all  that  is  best  in  the  his- 
tory of  America;  for  his  life  is  what  that  of  every 
citizen  should  be, — a  union  of  idealism  with  high 
common  sense.  He  saw  visions,  but  he  did  not 
try  to  reach  them  by  flying;  on  the  contrary,  he 
plodded  along  the  dusty  highroad  of  hard-headed 
practicality.  He  was  unalterably  convinced  that 
he  was  right;  but  he  neither  despised  nor  berated 
others  for  being  wrong.  He  was  patient,  with  that 
lofty  serenity  which  knows  that  all  God's  ways  are 
sure.  He  was  tolerant,  with  that  spirit  which  un- 
derstands that  ignorance,  not  wilfulness,  keeps  men 
in  the  wrong.  He  was  optimistic,  with  that  deep 
wisdom  which,  perceiving  every  obstacle  in  the  path- 
way, yet  sees  that  time  will  conquer  all.  He  was 
tactful,  with  the  true  instinct  of  a  child,  humble 


l62  New  England  Conscience 

with  the  humility  of  the  really  wise,  loving,  merci- 
ful, and  forgiving,  with  the  limitless  breadth  and 
charity  of  a  noble  soul. 

His  single  aim  in  life  was  to  fit  himself  for  service 
and  then  to  serve, — his  friends,  his  party,  his  state, 
his  country,  the  cause  (greater  than  state  or  nation) 
of  fundamental  justice  and  eternal  right.  He 
showed  how  any  youth,  no  matter  from  what  pov- 
erty and  ignorance,  can  exalt  himself  into  a  moral 
king  of  men ;  he  proved  what  unremitting  work 
can  do;  he  demonstrated  that  the  only  road  to  en- 
during success  is  the  straightforward  path  of 
honesty;  he  proved  again  that  righteous  courage 
wins;  he  exemplified  the  everlasting  truth  that  the 
sheet  anchors  of  life  are  the  great  moral  issues. 

There  seems  then,  nothing  of  sacrilege  in 
saying — so  like  was  Lincoln  to  the  Master,  so 
closely  did  he  follow  in  the  steps  of  that  earlier 
Emancipator — that  martyrdom  was  a  fitting  end 
and  crown  of  his  career.  And  we  as  a  nation  may 
today  soberly  rejoice  and  say,  using  his  own  incom- 
parable words,  that  we  feel  a  "solemn  pride"  in 
having  "laid  so  costly  a  sacrifice  upon  the  altar  of 
freedom."  The  sacrifice  of  Lincoln,  the  sacrifice 
of  the  thousands  of  his  people,  will  have  been,  how- 
ever, vain,  if  we  of  the  next  generation  do  not  fight 
the  modern  bloodless  battles  for  freeing  mankind 
from  sufifering,  selfishness  and  evil  in  the  same  lofty 
and  self-forgetting  spirit  as  that  of  those  who,  under 
the  leadership  of  Lincoln,  fought  the  great  military 
battles  of  the  Civil  War. 


The  Heart   of   the    United  States  163 

IX 

The  Heart  of  the  United  States 

"••— w— ^HE  centre  of  population,  now  in  In- 
I      ^diana,  is  traveling  straight  towards  the 

■  middle   point   of   Illinois.       The   cen- 

■  tre  of  manufacturing  has  reached  as 
J^  yet  only  eastern  Ohio,  but  is  march- 
ing in  a  bee-line  for  Chicago."  This,  the  Illinois 
boast,  is  perhaps  with  somewhat  rare  coincidence 
the  truth;  and  that  state,  in  more  than  one  mean- 
ing, is  soon  to  be  the  controlling  Heart  of  the 
United  States.  Therefore  it  is  of  vital,  as  well  as 
of  curious  interest  for  New  Englanders — fast  be- 
coming mere  onlookers  in  the  national  administra- 
tion— to  examine  and,  so  to  speak,  to  auscultate  this 
organ  which  will  increasingly  regulate  the  body 
politic. 

Illinois  drips  fatness.  Its  black,  oozy  soil  which 
eagerly  devours  one's  shoes;  its  corn  that,  refined 
by  selective  processes,  almost  exudes  oil ;  its  hogs 
that  can  scarcely  see  through  the  deep  folds  of  their 
unctuous  envelope;  its  beefsteaks,  pork-chops,  and 
corn-cakes,  glistening  from  the  ceaseless  sizzling  of 
the  frying  pan;  its  very  speech,  with  mouthed  syl- 
lables and  exaggerated  "r's," — all  are  fat  with  a  fat- 
ness almost  indecent  to  the  spare  New  Englander. 
Moreover,  the  oleaginous  carnival  seems  only  just 
begun.  Fertilizers  and  nitrogen-collectors  are  mak- 
ing the  sand-dunes   blossom;    swamp-draining  and 


164  New  England  Conscience 


well-driving  are  equalizing  conditions  of  moisture; 
rotation  of  crops  is  averting  possible  soil-exhaustion ; 
while  scientific  breeding  is  enriching  the  corn  at  will 
and  is  blanketing  the  corn-fed  hog  with  ever  thicker 
layers  of  obesity. 

To  classify  the  huge  stockyard  industries  as 
agriculture,  is  to  place  Illinois  first  among  the 
farming  states.  To  call  them  manufactures — and 
the  people  of  Chicago  generally  do  both — is  to  give 
her  the  rank  of  third  among  industrial  common- 
wealths. She  needs  no  forced  construction  of  words, 
however,  and  she  is  not  dependent  upon  Chicago 
alone,  to  put  her  in  the  forefront  of  manufacturing 
communities.  For,  having  learned  how  to  extract 
a  high  caloric  from  her  low-grade  coals;  having 
begun,  in  dearth  of  other  large  mineral  deposits,  to 
coin  her  clays  into  those  bricks,  tiles  and  cements 
which,  with  steel,  are  the  essence  of  modern  build- 
ing; possessing  lake,  river,  steam,  and  electric 
transportation  uninterrupted  by  any  mountain  or 
desert  barriers,  she  is  creating  enormous  enterprises 
which  will  soon  place  her  at  the  very  head. 

Illinois  takes  toll,  too,  upon  most  of  the  main  high- 
ways of  Americ?.  In  the  wide  area  between  the  At- 
lantic Ocean  ?llA  the  Rocky  Mountains  she  stands 
at  the  middle  point.  The  raw  and  manufactured 
products  of  the  earth — north,  south,  east,  and  west 
— must,  in  our  seething  traffic,  surge  largely  through 
her  territory;  she  is,  and  from  geographical  neces- 
sity must  always  be,  the  chief  sluiceway  for  this 
ceaseless  flood  of  things.  More  than  this,  the  multi- 
tudinous sea  of   restless  Americans — old   ones   and 


The  Heart  of  the   United  States         165 


new  ones — pours  into  and  through  her  avenues  of 
travel.  Unlike  New  York  and  Boston,  mere  filters 
through  which  the  immigrant  stream  rushes  or 
trickles,  leaving  behind  the  scum  and  dregs  of  alien 
peoples,  Illinois  is  a  smelting-pot  in  which  the 
stronger  and  more  active  foreigners  are  fused  with 
one  another  and  with  the  older  stock  into  real  Amer- 
ican citizenship. 

The  established  population  of  Illinois,  moreover, 
is  already  a  remarkable  alloy  of  North  and  South; 
for,  from  Chicago  down  to  a  line  passing  irregu- 
larly through  its  centre,  the  state  is  of  Yankee  ori- 
gin, having  been  settled  mainly  by  New  England 
pioneers;  but  from  the  Ohio  River  north  to  that 
irregular  line,  the  Illinois  stock  is  distinctively  south- 
ern. The  "Egyptians,"  as  they  call  the  natives  of 
Cairo,  Thebes,  and  other  grotesque  namesakes  of 
Old  Nile,  are  in  looks,  in  dialect,  in  habits  of 
thought,  and  in  instincts  and  traditions,  markedly 
of  the  South. 

An  immigrant  who  gets  as  far  from  the  coast  as 
Illinois  is  almost  certain  to  become  Americanized, 
~,ince  the  journey  to  the  Atlantic  is  too  great  to  be 
.aken  often,  and  there  can  be,  therefore,  little  of 
that  sailing  back  and  forth  which  makes  the  immi- 
grant of  the  seacoast  cities  frequently  a  denation- 
alized being,  severed  from  the  old  world,  but  not 
yet  joined  to  the  new.  But  in  the  smaller  cities 
and  in  the  towns  of  Illinois,  as  well  as  in  those  of 
other  Middle  West  States,  amalgamation  has  so 
far  progressed  that  one  may  say:  here  is  social  and 
political  America  as  it  will  be  when  immigration 


1 66  New  England  Conscience 


shall  have  become  normal,  when  the  unsettled  spaces 
shall  have  been  filled  up,  when  the  face  of  sub- 
stantially the  whole  country  shall  have  become  thick- 
sown  with  towns  joined  to  one  another  and  to  the 
great  cities  by  every  form  of  present  and  yet  undis- 
covered means  of  intercourse. 

Such  is  the  Illinois  of  today.  In  primeval  times, 
however  (that  is,  about  a  generation  ago),  she  was 
as  lean  as  she  now  is  fat.  The  state  has  not  simply 
gained  materially, — she  has  been  regenerated ;  she 
is  a  Cinderella  translated  from  the  ashheap  to  the 
palace  among  states.  Less  than  forty  years  ago  Illi- 
nois was  a  place  disheartened.  New  Englanders,  tired 
of  attempting  to  raise  crops  on  stone-heaps,  had  gone 
hopefully  out  to  this  frontier  where  a  pebble  is  a 
curiosity.  Southerners,  set  adrift  by  war  or  averse  to 
working  with  emancipated  blacks,  had  come  North 
to  make  fortunes  out  of  corn.  The  Easterners,  how- 
ever, still  clung  to  the  primitive  agricultural  meth- 
ods of  New  England,  while  the  Mississippians  tried 
to  cultivate  cereals  in  the  same  way  as  cotton.  The 
breaking  up  of  so  much  virgin  land,  moreover,  opened 
a  very  Pandora's  box  of  miasmic  fevers.  A  people 
who  knew  nothing  of  the  habits  of  the  mosquito 
fought  the  "chills,"  as  they  indiscriminately  called 
the  fevers,  with  whiskey  and  quinine.  Two-thirds  of 
the  population  of  the  Southern  Illinois  bottom-lands 
died,  in  those  pioneer  days,  of  malaria  and  of  dis- 
eases which  found  ready  entrance  into  constitutions 
weakened  by  its  assaults.  The  chills,  the  bad  whis- 
key, and  the  adulterated  quinine,  produced  a  type  lit- 
tle more  ambitious  than  the  Georgia  "Cracker."  The 


The  Heart  of  the   United  States         167 


once  active  Yankee,  weakened  by  malaria,  depressed 
by  the  flat  monotony,  contaminated  by  the  shiftless- 
ness  of  his  poor-white  neighbors,  became  even  more 
inert  than  they;  and  thus  was  produced  the  typical, 
hideous  Illinois  landscape  of  about  1 880. 

Treeless  distances  were  broken  only  by  rare  bits 
of  "timber,"  or  by  hedges  of  the  melancholy  osage 
orange,  planted  as  breaks  against  the  frightful  winds. 
Roads  that  were  impassable  for  a  third  of  the  year, 
mountainous  with  ruts  for  another  third,  and  whirl- 
ing dustbreeders  during  the  remainder,  sprawled  un- 
tidily in  miscellaneous  directions.  There  were  no 
bridges  to  speak  of;  but  there  were  fearful  mud- 
fords  called  "slews,"  into  which  one  plunged  at  a 
terrifying  angle  from  the  hither  brink,  through  which 
the  natives  urged  the  horses  or  oxen  by  merciless  beat- 
ings and  incredible  oaths,  and  out  of  which  it  seemed, 
as  in  "Pilgrim's  Progress,"  impossible  for  such  sin- 
ners ever  to  emerge. 

The  so-called  towns,  clinging  here  and  there  to 
the  single-track  railroads,  were  mere  huddles  of  one- 
storied  shacks,  pretending  to  be  two-storied  by  the 
palpable  device  of  a  clap-boarded  false  front.  At 
long  distances  from  these  towns,  and  from  one  anoth- 
er, would  be  found  a  house,  single-roomed,  with  a 
cock-loft,  and  set  upon  stilts  to  form  a  shelter  for 
the  pigs.  Its  front  steps  were  a  slanting  board,  like 
the  approach  to  a  hen-roost,  and  it  was  swept  inside 
and  out,  above  and  below,  by  every  blast  from  Heav- 
en. Outside  the  door,  just  where  the  sink-spout 
emptied,  would  be  dug  a  shallow  well,  its  water  so 
rich  in  lime  as  actually  to  taste  of  it,  and  as  a  con- 


1 68  New  England  Conscience 


sequence  so  hard  that  a  person  who  should  spend 
his  whole  life  in  Illinois  would  be  a  sedimentary  de- 
posit of  the  dust  and  mud  of  all  his  days.  Scattered 
around  were  a  few  sheds  to  give  pretense  of  shelter 
to  the  ill-kept  cattle;  scattered  still  farther  around, 
and  shelterless,  were  agricultural  machines,  once  cost- 
ly, but  now  rusted  and  practically  useless;  and 
spreading  away  as  far  as  one  could  see  was  an  ocean 
of  the  Illinois  staple,  corn. 

Were  the  harvest  promising,  however,  along  came 
the  chinch-bug,  the  army-worm,  or  the  locust,  to  eat 
it  clean,  or  the  prairie  fire  to  burn  it.  Were  it 
brought  actually  to  the  point  of  a  fine  harvest,  there 
would  be  no  demand,  or  the  rickety  railroads  would 
be  so  choked  with  freight  that  the  grain  could  not 
reach  a  market,  and  must  be  used  for  household  fuel. 
Working  listlessly  in  those  fields  were  gaunt  men, 
shaking  with  "chills;"  in  that  shanty  were  a  gaunt 
woman  and  many  cadaverous  children,  also  shaking 
with  chills,  the  lives  of  all  of  them  a  seemingly 
hopeless  struggle  against  the  elements,  sickness,  poor 
food,  and  the  uncertainty  of  "craps." 

So  far  as  they  could  navigate  the  prairie  and  the 
"slews,"  the  people  were  hospitable,  and  at  harvest- 
time  the  neighbors  over  a  wide  circle  would,  in  turn, 
help  each  the  other  with  his  crops.  At  funerals,  too 
— almost  the  sole  diversion, — friends  and  relatives 
would  come  from  far  and  near,  and  would  encamp 
for  a  fortnight  upon  the  bereft,  eating  in  melancholy 
festivity  the  funeral  fried  meats.  Religion,  like  every- 
thing else,  was  rugged  and  strong,  for  the  pains  of 
eternal  damnation  were  far  more  conceivable  than 


The  Heart   of   the    United  States  1 69 

the  blessings  of  paradise.  Schools  were  scarce  and 
doctors  scarcer.  In  short,  there  was  found  in  Illi- 
nois at  that  time  frontier  life  with  none  of  the  ex- 
citement which  comes  from  the  dangers  of  explora- 
tion, but  with  all  the  discomfort  arising  out  of 
remoteness  from  even  the  rudiments  of  civilized 
existence. 

What  has  transformed  the  fever-stricken,  mort- 
gage-ridden, and  poverty-blasted  Illinois  of  the 
eighties  into  the  thriving,  hustling  heart  of  the 
United  States?  Two  things:  modern  science,  and 
real,  effective  education.  Draining  the  fields  and 
discovering  the  proximate  cause  of  malaria  practic- 
ally destroyed  the  chills  and  fever;  extending  and 
modernizing  railroad  and  steamship  lines  gave  ready 
access  to  the  markets  of  the  world ;  the  telephone  put 
an  end  to  the  horrible  isolation  and  loneliness  of  the 
farmhouse ;  the  interurban  trolley-line  made  path- 
ways over  the  muddy  prairies  and  bottomless 
"slews ;"  cement  manufacturing  enabled  the  smallest 
hamlet  to  build  sidewalks  and  even  to  pave  streets; 
while,  as  for  education,  the  farmers  have  been  sys- 
tematically and  wisely  instructed  how  to  make  farm- 
ing pay. 

This  education  of  the  farmer  has  been  carried  on 
in  at  least  two  ways.  At  the  time  when  the  face  of 
Illinois  was  that  of  grim  desolation,  certain  shrewd 
investors — notably  some  from  Great  Britain — bought 
up,  for  the  proverbial  song,  great  areas  of  these 
poorly  tilled  farms  from  their  ague-stricken  owners, 
and  began  to  cultivate  them  in  wholesale,  scientific 
ways.     So    large    grew    these    foreign    holdings — in 


I70  New  England  Conscience 


some  cases  embracing  the  greater  part  of  a  county — 
that  the  state  government  became  alarmed  and 
passed  legislation  forbidding  the  inheritance  of  land 
excepting  by  bona  fide  citizens  of  Illinois,  These 
and  other  extensive  farms,  however,  all  skilfully 
and  very  profitably  developed,  served,  and  still  serve, 
as  well-appreciated  object  lessons  to  the  lesser  own- 
ers, and  have  done  much  to  revolutionize  the  farm- 
ing methods  of  the  entire  Middle  West. 

The  main  work  of  education,  however,  has  been 
performed  by  the  state,  entering  the  field  as  a  prac- 
tical teacher  of  scientific  farming.  The  State  Uni- 
versity and  Agricultural  Experiment  Station  together 
began  the  work,  fifteen  or  twenty  years  ago,  of  find- 
ing out  what  might  be  the  best  crops  for  Illinois,  how 
those  crops  could  most  profitably  be  raised,  in  what 
ways  they  might  be  increased ;  and  then,  of  teaching 
all  this  to  the  adult  farmer  through  farmers'  insti- 
tutes, local  experiment  stations,  and  demonstration 
trains,  and  to  the  farmer's  son  through  courses  in 
agriculture  in  the  University, 

The  State  University  cannot  be  acquitted  of  all 
ulterior  motive  in  this;  on  the  contrary,  it  deliber- 
ately developed  this  sort  of  education  in  order  to 
catch  the  farmers'  votes.  For  years  that  State  Uni- 
versity had  been  going  to  the  capitol,  humbly  beg- 
ging for  ten  thousand  or  twenty  thousand  dollars, 
and  finding  it  almost  impossible  to  secure  even  that 
pittance  from  rural  members  who  could  see  nothing 
for  them,  directly  or  indirectly,  in  the  University. 
But  when  Dr.  Andrew  S.  Draper  was  made  presi- 
dent, he  and  some  of  his  colleagues  among  the  trus- 


The  Heart   of   the    United  States  171 


tees  and  faculty  determined  to  win  the  farmer  vote 
by  proving  that  the  University  could  put  millions  of 
dollars  into  the  pockets  of  the  farmers  by  increasing 
the  yield  of  corn,  by  teaching  how  to  utilize  swampy 
and  sandy  lands,  by  improving  the  breeds  of  cattle, 
by  developing  dairying,  etc.  Nobly  the  University 
fulfilled  its  self-imposed  task,  and  generously  did  the 
farmer-legislature  respond  with  appropriations,  so 
th;it  today  it  gives  millions  where  formerly  it  be- 
grudged ten-thousands. 

Other  elements,  of  course,  have  entered  in.  The 
rapid  growth  of  the  University  of  Chicago  has 
spurred  the  country  districts  into  a  rivalry  most  prof- 
itable to  the  State  University  at  Urbana;  and  a 
florid  type  of  advertising,  appealing  to  the  aver- 
age Westerner's  love  of  bigness,  has  been  used  with 
consummate  skill.  Whatever  the  means,  however, — 
and  they  have  all  been  honorable,  if  more  breezily 
Western  than  those  to  which  the  East  is  accustomed, 
— and  whatever  some  of  the  ill  effects  upon  the 
University,  the  results  in  the  state  as  a  whole  have 
been  little  short  of  magical.  For  the  University  in 
its  campaign  for  votes  and  funds,  has  not  stopped 
at  the  farmers.  It  has  sedulously  catered,  too,  in  the 
good  meaning  of  that  word,  to  the  manufacturers. 
The  engineering  side  has  grown  even  faster  than  the 
agricultural ;  and  its  schools,  housed  in  a  number 
of  well-designed  buildings,  are  fast  taking  high  rank. 
These  schools  are  making  themselves  directly  useful 
to  the  state,  among  many  other  ways,  by  conducting 
experiments  upon  the  low-grade  coals  of  Illinois, 
burning  them  with  every  sort  of  grate-bar,  under 


172  New  England  Conscience 


every  conceivable  condition,  and  in  all  kinds  of  mix- 
tures, in  order  to  determine  in  what  ways  they  may 
be  made  to  produce  the  most  power  at  the  least  ex- 
pense. They  are  carrying  on  an  elaborate  series  of 
tests  upon  concrete,  plain  and  reenforced,  to  ascer- 
tain the  value  of  the  various  mixtures  and  the  be- 
havior of  this  new  building  material  under  all  man- 
ner of  demands.  And  in  cooperation  with  the  Illi- 
nois Central  Railroad  and  the  interurban  railways, 
the  University  maintains  two  elaborately  fitted  dyna- 
mometer cars,  running  them  for  long  distances,  and 
placing  the  results  at  the  disposition  of  the  state. 

What  have  been  some  of  the  effects,  from  the 
standpoint  of  a  casual  Easterner,  of  the  enormous  and 
comparatively  sudden  development  of  this  great, 
pivotal  state?  The  characteristic  most  obvious,  as 
has  been  said,  is  that  of  omnipresent  fatness,  and  of 
the  materialistic  attitude  of  mind  which  such  plen- 
teousness  breeds.  Fertility,  be  it  of  fields  or  of 
beasts,  is  a  topic  which  never  wearies,  and  which 
makes  one  feel  at  last  that  the  very  sows  and  corn- 
stalks are  in  a  conscious  race  for  fecundity.  The 
stockyards  are  proudly  shown,  not  as  a  triumph  of 
modern  ingenuity,  but  as  a  spectacle  of  animals  by 
the  acre.  The  increased  oil  of  the  selectively  bred 
corn  is  exhibited,  not  as  an  intellectual  conquest  of 
the  chemist,  but  as  a  feeder  of  hogs  still  fatter  than 
before.  Even  the  frenzy  of  the  wheat-pit,  and  the 
fortune-hunting  schemes  which  rob  the  poor  of  their 
savings,  are  attempts  to  make  money  breed  faster 
than  it  has  any  right,  or  real  power,  to  do. 

The  dominant  note  in  conversation,  therefore,  is 


The  Heart   of   the    United  States         I73 


that  of  gain, — gain  in  acreage,  gain  in  yield,  gain 
in  income ;  and  to  one  who  looked  no  farther  it 
would  appear  that  the  mass  of  the  people  are  sor- 
did and  materialistic,  are  mere  worshippers  of  the 
fast-waxing  dollar.  It  is  this  superficial  materialism, 
with  its  fungus-growth  of  hideousness,  that  makes  the 
New  England  traveler  condemn,  in  large  part,  Chi- 
cago. A  lake-front  unsurpassed  in  possibilities  of 
heauty  is  usurped  by  the  tracks  and  purlieus  of  an 
ill-kept  railroad.  Business  streets  that,  ten  years 
after  the  great  fire,  promised  to  be  almost  grand 
in  their  width  and  perspective,  are  now  mere  smoky 
tunnels  under  the  filth-dripping  gridirons  of  the  ele- 
vated railways.  State  Street,  which  then  had  the 
elements  of  a  noble  main  avenue,  affronts  one  with 
the  unspeakable  lines  of  cast-iron  department  stores. 
Palaces  on  certain  avenues  are  cheek-by-jowl  with 
dilapidated  hovels;  the  semi-detached  villas  farther 
out  of  town  are,  many  of  them,  wretchedly  be- 
draggled; and  the  whole  impression  left  by  large 
areas  is  a  mingling  of  interminable  clothes-lines  and 
flaming,  peeling  bill-boards.  The  city's  buildings  are 
black  with  the  smoke  blanketing  the  sky;  factories, 
each  more  hideous  than  the  other,  intrude  almost 
everywhere ;  and  the  vile  river,  only  partly  cleansed 
by  the  drainage  canal,  makes  even  suicide  abhorrent. 
One  does  not  hesitate  thus  to  scourge  Chicago,  for 
she  has  no  excuse.  She  cannot  plead  newness,  for 
she  is  no  younger  than  Cleveland,  which  is  beautiful ; 
she  cannot  plead  swiftness  of  growth,  for  the  mag- 
nificent city  of  Berlin  has  developed  quite  as  rap- 
idly as  she. 


174  New  England  Conscience 


Leaving  Chicago,  however — and  the  city  has  an- 
nexed so  much  territory  that  it  takes  an  hour  or  two 
to  do  so, — and  getting  out  upon  the  uncontaminated 
prairie,  one  realizes  that  this  vast  area  of  farms 
and  towns  and  small  cities  is  a  very  different  thing 
from  the  Babel  metropolis;  and  it  is  this  rural  Illi- 
nois which  is  the  true  flesh  and  blood  of  the  great 
heart  of  the  United  States.  The  Atlantic  seaboard 
states,  with  the  ocean  in  front  of  them  and  the  moun- 
tains behind  them,  with  Europe  and  South  America 
and  the  islands  of  the  sea  feeding  them  with  ideas 
more  or  less  new  to  the  United  States,  will  never 
wholly  lose  their  individuality.  The  Pacific  states, 
for  like  reasons,  will  have  distinctiveness  for  all  time 
to  come.  But  the  enormous  basin  between  the  Ap- 
palachians and  the  Rockies  will,  as  it  consolidates, 
grow,  like  its  monotonous  plains,  more  and  more 
indistinguishable,  the  one  section  from  the  other, 
until  it  will  think  and  act  and  live  substantially  as  a 
unit,  dominating  by  its  bulk  and  the  vastness  of  its 
homogeneity  the  political  life  of  the  United  States. 
As  the  advance  type  of  what  this  interior  empire  is 
to  be, — indeed  as  the  dominant  pioneer  which  will 
largely  impose  its  own  characteristics  upon  that  ex- 
tensive area, — Illinois  should  have  the  careful  study 
of  all  thoughtful  Americans. 

The  first  characteristic  which  strikes  one  in  the 
Illinois  people  is  their  friendliness.  It  is  said  of 
the  Australians  that  the  question  of  ancestry  is  ta- 
booed in  polite  society,  lest  investigation  hark  back 
to  Botany  Bay.  While  the  Middle  Westerners  have 
no  such  fear,  while  most  of  them,  did  they  choose. 


The  Heart   of  the    United  States  175 

could  go  back  to  the  purest  Southern  and  New  Eng- 
land strains,  so  many  of  them  have  come  "out  of  the 
everywhere"  that  they  do  not  stop  to  inquire  who 
was  a  man's  grandfather,  but,  on  the  contrary,  bid 
him  welcome  without  even  waiting  to  be  introduced. 
The  old  hospitality  of  pioneer  days  has  survived,  and 
opens  the  house  without  apology  for  its  shortcomings, 
or  lamentations  that  it  is  not  more  fit.  This  kind 
of  hospitality,  unfortunately,  is  becoming  obsolete 
in  Massachusetts,  where  today,  in  order  to  see  his 
neighbors,  a  man  must  put  on  evening  dress,  play 
bridge,  and  eat  caterers'  ice-cream. 

A  second  thing  which  impresses  a  New  Englander 
is  the  restlessness  and  abruptness  born  of  lifelong 
"hustle."  The  people  of  Illinois  are  in  too  much 
of  a  hurry  to  mind  the  little  niceties  of  etiquette; 
they  say  the  blunt  thing  because  it  takes  less  time 
than  courtesy;  their  behavior  in  the  hours  of  sup- 
posed relaxation  is  that  which  the  Massachusetts  man 
keeps  for  his  office,  where  he  has  to  be  brusque  in 
order  to  get  through.  This  gives  everything  in 
Illinois  an  air  of  ceaseless  business,  and  leads  to  the 
unwarranted  conclusion  that  all  Westerners  (as 
some  of  them  do)  sleep  in  their  working  clothes. 

A  third  characteristic  of  the  people  of  the  Middle 
West  is  their  large  view  of  things,  or,  to  speak  more 
accurately,  their  way  of  looking  at  things  in  the  large. 
Because  of  the  habit  of  ploughing  fields  by  the  square 
mile  and  of  killing  pigs  by  the  carload,  the  man  of 
Illinois  deals  in  commercial  ideas  by  the  yard,  not,  as 
Easterners  do,  by  the  quarter-inch.  He  plays  for 
high  stakes  in  business,  and  if,  as  is  likely,  he  loses. 


176  New  England  Conscience 


he  plays  again.  Whether  he  is  up  or  whether  he  is 
down  seems  to  matter  little,  provided  he  keeps  in 
the  game.  This  sweeping  habit  of  mind,  however,  is 
fatal  to  fine  analysis;  and  while,  for  example,  the 
Illinois  teacher  is  ready  to  try  splendid,  comprehen- 
sive experiments  in  the  schools  and  colleges,  while  he 
handles  the  problems  of  education  as  Napoleon 
handled  strategy,  he  is  lacking  in  intellectual  dis- 
crimination and  finesse.  As  a  result  of  this  habit  of 
mind,  most  of  these  Middle  Westerners  seem  to  the 
Easterner  superficial  and  inclined  to  accept  what 
Gelett  Burgess  so  cleverly  calls  "bromidio'ms"  for 
revelations  of  new  truth. 

What  strikes  one  most  startingly,  however,  in  the 
people  of  Illinois  is  their  lack  of  imagination.  This, 
moreover,  is  a  fundamental  deficiency.  They  are  a 
plains  people,  with  no  mountains  to  vary  their  view- 
point, no  changes  of  altitude  to  foster  modifications 
of  temperament,  no  salt  breezes  to  make  their  brains 
tingle,  no  expanse  of  ocean,  no  beetling  cliffs,  no 
roar  of  breakers,  no  play  of  color  upon  the  sea,  no 
awfulness  of  tempest  on  ocean  and  on  mountain,  none 
of  those  natural  phenomena — except  perhaps  cyclones 
— which  are  absolutely  essential,  not  only  to  the  mak- 
ing of  poets,  but  also  to  the  developing  of  the  hum- 
bler imaginations  of  Tom,  Dick  and  Harry.  Of 
course  many  of  them  travel, — journeying  they  treat 
in  the  same  large  way  as  business,  thinking  nothing 
of  traveling  four  hours  by  train  to  buy  a  spool  of 
thread, — but  the  rank  and  file  of  them  do  not  go  far 
enough  from  home  ever  to  see  the  ocean  or  to  climb 
a  respectable  hill, 


The  Heart   of   the    United  States  177 


There  is,  therefore,  an(>  always  must  be,  over  this 
vast  central  United  States  this  limitation  of  experi- 
ence which  places  the  natives,  figuratively  as  well  as 
literally,  upon  a  lower  plane  than  mountain  and 
coast-dwellers.  They  have  some,  and  will  have 
more,  idealism ;  but  it  is  the  idealism  of  doing  things 
on  a  large  scale,  not  that  of  seeking  to  attain  such 
perfection  as  only  the  highly  developed  imagination  is 
able  to  portray.  Their  ideals  for  America  are,  and 
probably  always  will  be,  sturdy  but  commonplace, — 
not  like  those,  therefore,  of  the  men  who  conceived 
the  Declaration  of  Independence  and  framed  the 
Constitution. 

Because  of  these  fundamental  qualities,  Mr. 
Roosevelt  and  Mr.  Cannon  (from  Danville,  Illi- 
nois) are  to  these  Middle  Westerners  the  greatest 
and  wisest  among  statesmen.  Both  these  leaders  are 
honest,  like  the  average  of  men  in  Illinois;  both  are 
"hustlers"  like  them;  the  one  is  nervously  busy,  the 
other  is  shrewdly  canny,  like  them ;  both  are  blunt, 
like  them ;  both  are  fighters,  as  those  men  of  Illi- 
nois have  had  to  be;  both  lack  imagination,  and 
therefore  utter  long-accepted  platitudes  with  the  so- 
nority of  new-found  wisdom;  and,  like  those  folk 
of  the  Middle  West,  both  are  genuine  democrats, 
accepting  men  for  what  they  are,  and  liking  them, 
not  because  they  had  good  grandfathers,  but  be- 
cause they  seem  in  a  fair  way  to  be  good  grandfath- 
ers. Political  leaders  of  the  Roosevelt  and  Cannon 
type  are  doubtless  to  be,  therefore,  the  very  highest 
which  we  can  ever  reach  in  statesmanship,  and  de- 
mocracy of  the  Illinois  type  is  to  be  the  standard  of 


178  New  England  Conscience 


the  twentieth  century. 

New  England  must  recognize  this,  accept  it,  and 
govern  herself  accordingly.  She  must  appreciate, 
not  only  that  she  never  again  can  take  that  leading 
part  in  the  councils  of  the  nation  which  she  held  for 
a  hundred  years,  but  also  that  she  must  never  ex- 
pect to  see  the  kind  of  democracy  which  was  the  ideal 
(however  inadequately  reached)  of  the  Atlantic 
states  when  they  were  the  leaders  of  America.  The 
democracy  of  the  government  is  henceforth  to  be  that 
of  the  great  Central  Plain,  a  democracy  much  more 
widespread  but  far  less  fertile  of  great  men  and  of 
high  aspirations  than  was  that  of  the  first  century 
of  our  national  life.  Mediocrity  is  in  the  political 
saddle ;  and  the  business,  therefore,  of  the  educa- 
tional, as  distinguished  from  the  political  leader  is 
to  provide  that  type  of  common  schooling  which  shall 
tend  to  uplift  mediocrity  rather  than,  as  is  the  usual 
result  of  our  present  methods,  to  perpetuate  medi- 
ocrity, and  to  discourage  even  the  gifted  youth. 

Hence  the  role  of  Massachusetts,  with  her  history, 
her  climate  and  topography,  her  lead  as  the  best 
educated  and  the  most  "otherwise-minded"  (that  is 
to  say,  the  most  uplifted  above  mediocrity)  state  of 
the  Union,  with  her  inheritance  of  sea-power  and  her 
nearness  to  Europe, — her  special  role  under  the  new 
order  is  to  develop,  through  the  intelligent  education 
of  the  many  and  through  the  special  training  of  the 
few,  the  exceptional  man,  whether  in  literature,  art, 
science,  statecraft,  commerce  or  manufacturing. 

Massachusetts  cannot  compete  with  the  thousand- 
acre  farms  of  Illinois,  in  that  species  of  agriculture; 


The  Heart   of   the    United  States         179 

but  she  can  hold  her  own  and  can  excel,  even  with 
her  tiny  holdings,  by  stimulating  that  intensive  farm- 
ing which  makes  an  acre  of  swampland  yield  more  in 
point  of  value  than  a  square  mile  of  prairie.  She 
cannot  manufacture  in  a  large  way,  as  the  West  and 
South  can,  close  as  both  are  to  the  raw  material,  and 
accustomed  as  the  former  is  to  dealing  with  large 
propositions ;  but  she  can  make  the  finer  and  the 
finest  things,  most  of  which  now  come  from  abroad, 
but  all  of  which  might  readily  be  fashioned  within 
the  four  boundaries  of  the  commonwealth. 

Massachusetts  can  solve  the  hard  problems  of  nur- 
turing and  training  the  most  highly  skilled  workmen, 
if  she  will  utilize  the  energy  of  the  men  and  women 
who  are  eager  and  fit  to  make  a  sound  study  of  that 
vital  question.  The  state  can  produce,  not  only  great 
artisans,  but  great  artists,  if  she  will  but  give  that 
encouragement  which  has  always  been  essential  to 
their  flowering.  And  those  great  colleges  and  schools 
for  which  the  commonwealth  is  justly  famous  can 
keep  themselves  at  the  front  as  leaders  and  inspirers 
if  they  will  be  true  to  that  idealism  which,  from  its 
very  founding,  has  been  the  life  and  soul  of  Massa- 
chusetts. 

The  deservedly  large  and  phenomenally  growing 
state  universities  of  the  Middle  West  will,  for- 
tunately, press  these  Massachusetts  institutions  hard ; 
but  they  can  never  catch  up  if  the  education  of  the 
commonwealth  keeps  going  too.  These  western  uni- 
versities will  lose  breath  in  the  running,  for  two 
reasons:  first,  because  they  must  always  keep  an  eye 
upon  politics  and  must  often  do,  not  what  they  know 


i8o  New  England  Conscience 

to  be  educationally  right,  but  what  they  are 
certain  the  people  will  demand, — and  that  people,  as 
has  been  seen,  is  governed  by  mediocrity;  secondly, 
because  these  state  universities  must  dovetail  in  with 
the  common-school  system  and  must  admit  practically 
every  public-school  boy  or  girl  who  can  show  a  very 
moderate  proficiency.  Therefore  no  state-supported 
university  in  a  democracy  can  ever  compete  on  equal 
terms  with  one  privately  endowed,  which  has  none 
to  placate  excepting  the  alumni,  and  which  may  weed 
out  its  student  body  just  as  far  as  it  thinks  necessary 
to  maintain  the  highest  standards  of  efficiency. 

Massachusetts,  however,  has  many  things  to  learn 
of  the  opulent,  optimistic  Middle  West,  and  it  is 
greatly  to  be  wished  that  every  citizen  of  the  Bay  State 
might  spend  at  least  one  year  of  his  early  manhood  in 
such  a  state  as  Illinois.  Indeed,  our  educational  sys- 
tem will  not  be  complete  until  it  is  made  possible 
for  a  youth  seeking  a  higher  education  to  take  his  col- 
lege and  professional  course  partly  in  the  East  and 
partly  in  the  West,  the  leading  institutions  having 
put  themselves,  for  that  purpose,  on  some  common 
basis  of  scholarship  requirement  and  each  having  con- 
sented to  give,  like  the  state  law,  "due  faith  and 
credit"  to  the  educational  work  of  all  the  others. 

Could  the  great  bulk  of  "leading"  Massachusetts 
men  be  induced  to  make  even  a  temporary  acquaint- 
ance with  the  spirit  of  the  people  of  the  Middle 
West,  they  would  discover  that  the  Hub  of  the  Solar 
System  has  been  moved,  and  that  an  attempt  to  make 
a  close  corporation,  capitalized  upon  ancient  prestige, 
of  Bostonianism  is  to  invite  commercial,  industrial, 


The  Heart   of   the    United  States         l8l 

and  intellectual  dry-rot.  Too  many  native  Boston- 
ians  are  of  the  mind  of  the  aristocratic  lady  from 
Cambridge,  who,  late  in  life,  was  induced  to  spend 
a  few  weeks  at  Gloucester,  and  who  announced  to 
her  amazed  friends  on  her  return  that  she  had  met 
there  quite  a  number  of  excellent  persons  whose 
names  even  she  never  before  had  heard.  Massachu- 
setts men,  too,  were  they  to  go  West  occasionally, 
would  learn  the  merits — as  well  as  the  demerits — 
of  "hustling,"  and  would  perhaps  acquire  some  of 
that  simple,  hearty  friendliness  which  so  lubricates 
the  machinery  of  social  intercourse. 

There  are,  however,  more  specific  and  important 
things  for  Massachusetts  to  learn  from  Illinois.  She 
ought,  above  all,  to  adopt  the  well-considered  plan 
— almost  magical  in  its  effects — of  scientifically  ex- 
ploiting her  resources,  and  teaching  her  farmers,  mer- 
chants, manufacturers,  importers  and  exporters  what 
the  state  is  capable  of  doing.  It  is  a  trite  saying  that 
only  a  few  of  the  possibilities  of  a  human  being  are 
developed  in  the  ordinary  course  of  a  man's  or  wom- 
an's life.  It  is  still  more  true,  however,  that  but  the 
merest  beginning  has  been  made  in  the  development 
of  the  resources  of  Massachusetts  or  of  any  other 
state  of  the  Union. 

The  forests,  in  a  political  division  so  small  and  so 
densely  peopled  as  is  Massachusetts,  would  seem 
hardly  worth  consideration ;  yet,  were  even  the  rudi- 
ments of  the  science  of  forestry  comprehended  by  the 
farmers,  immense  areas  of  land,  now  waste,  might  be 
made  to  yield,  every  thirty  or  forty  years,  a  crop 
of  great  value.     The  applications  of  chemistry  to 


1 82  New  England  Conscience 


farming  have  so  revolutionized  this  industry  that — 
including  these  forest  areas — there  is  scarcely  a  foot 
of  the  bleak  soil  of  Massachusetts  w^hich  might  not 
be  made  profitable.  Her  conformation  provides 
hundreds  and  thousands  of  little  water-courses, 
vv^hich,  properly  utilized,  might  be  made,  by  electrical 
transmission,  large  sources  of  manufacturing  pow^er. 

The  Bay  State  has  no  coal-beds;  but  she  has 
enormous  areas  of  peat,  to  utilize  w^hich  is  nowr  a 
theoretical,  and  soon  w^ill  be  a  practical,  possibility. 
With  her  many  cities  and  large  towns,  and  with  the 
growth  of  rapid  transit,  dairying,  market-gardening, 
and  the  raising  of  fowls  may  be  indefinitely  extended, 
with  increasing  profit  to  both  producer  and  con- 
sumer. Above  all,  with  a  long  seaboard  protected 
by  encircling  capes  and  presenting  many  safe  har- 
bors, with  ample  water-powers,  with  a  comparatively 
dense  population  providing,  together  with  immigra- 
tion, an  abundant  supply  of  potential  workmen,  and 
with  her  long  history  of  manufacturing  prowess, 
Massachusetts  should  always  remain  great  among 
industrial  states. 

For  such  a  development  of  her  resources,  the  com- 
monwealth needs  to  study  and  heed  the  example  of 
the  Middle  West:  that  of  educating  her  citizens  in 
the  fundamental  principles  of  production  and  distri- 
bution, and  in  the  application  of  those  principles  to  the 
requirements  of  modem  life.  The  world  today  is  a 
world  of  applied  science;  and  the  line  of  develop- 
ment to  be  followed — especially  in  such  states  as 
Massachusetts — is  that  of  the  application  of  science 
to  agriculture,  to  manufacturing,  to  commerce,  to 


The  Heart   of   the    United  States         183 


transportation,  and,  not  least,  to  education.  The 
states  of  the  Middle  West — many  of  them  daugh- 
ters of  Massachusetts — have  clearly  pointed  out  the 
way ;  it  is  for  Massachusetts  to  profit  by  their  exam- 
ple and  to  recover,  in  leadership  along  these  modern 
lines,  the  educational  prestige  which,  in  the  ancient 
and  now  outworn  paths  of  learning,  she  for  so  many 
years  maintained. 


184  New  England  Conscience 

X 

The  Eternal  Feminine 

JOHN  FISKE,  in  his  lucid  way,  shows  that 
civilization  has  arisen  largely  from  the  simple 
fact  that  the  young  of  man  are  born,  and  for 
some  years  remain,  so  helpless  that  abandon- 
ment means  death.  He  might  well  have  gone 
farther  and  maintained  that  the  evolution  of  man- 
kind out  of  savagery  has  been  due,  not  simply  to 
the  helplessness  of  infancy  and  the  consequent  neces- 
sity for  family  life,  but  also  to  the  fact  that  the  rear- 
ing of  children  has  been  so  largely  in  the  hands  of 
women.  It  is  the  eternal  feminine  transmitted  to 
men  in  their  blood  that  keeps  them  as  decent  as  they 
are;  it  is  that  eternal  feminine  deified  for  them  in 
the  impossible  woman  whom,  in  youth,  they  worship, 
that  changes  them  from  cubs  to  men;  it  is  the 
eternal  feminine  with  which,  personified,  callow 
youths  "fall  in  love"  that  not  only  civilizes  the  indi- 
vidual but  is  gradually  bringing  towards  genuine  civ- 
ilization a  large  portion  of  mankind. 

Woman  possesses  the  eternal  feminine  by  the  grace 
of  God.  Man  cannot  possess  it  except  in  that  vile 
counterfeit,  effeminacy;  in  that  pale  reflection  of  it 
which  comes  sometimes  through  asceticism;  or  in 
some  abnormal  instance  where  the  man  must  play 
the  mother's  part.  It  is  the  absolute,  spiritual  sex- 
distinction  which  no  propaganda  for  equal  suffrage, 
no  striving  for  economic  equality,  no  affectations  of 


The  Eternal  Feminine  185 


the  "bachelor  girl," — which  not  even  feminine  smok- 
ing, drinking  and  swearing  can  ever  wholly  nullify 
or  efface. 

The  obvious  good,  to  men,  of  the  eternal  feminine 
is  that  of  physical  protection.  It  is  the  vigilant  fe- 
male hand  which  snatches  Tommy  from  under  horses' 
hoofs  while  the  unheeding  father  dashes  across  the 
street.  It  is  the  mother  who  gauges  mittens,  rub- 
bers and  uther  impedimenta  to  those  weather  changes 
which  make  no  impression  upon  the  harsher  male.  It 
is  the  anxious  feminine  parent  who  fills  the  little  boy 
with  necessary — and,  alas,  with  many  superfluous — 
fears  and  precautions  while  the  father,  stoutly  though 
quite  ineffectually,  is  maintaining  that  experience  is 
the  sounder  guide.  A  woman's  ceaseless  and  thank- 
less vigilance  preserves  many  an  obstinate  urchin 
from  an  early  grave,  saves  many  a  wilful  youth  from 
pneumonia,  maintains  intact  the  horrid  qualities  of 
many  a  curmudgeon.  On  the  other  hand,  it  smooths 
the  path  and  makes  possible  the  great  work  of  count- 
less prophets  for  humanity.  So  many  men,  however, 
are  saved  by  some  patient  woman  only  to  do  her  and 
the  community  mischief,  that  were  this  the  sole,  or 
even  the  main,  function  of  the  eternal  feminine,  it 
would  be,  in  the  long  run,  of  doubtful  value  to  hu- 
manity. 

Fortunately,  however,  while  men  are  being  soft- 
ened, spoiled  and  made  monsters  of  egoism  by  this 
phase  of  femininity,  they  are  at  the  same  time  being 
regenerated  and  uplifted  by  its  many  other  manifes- 
tations. Like  the  spear  of  holy  legend,  the  gift  of 
healing  in   the  eternal   feminine  far  transcends   its 


1 86  New  England  Conscience 

power  to  wound.  On  this  more  subtle  side,  it  is  the 
greatest  ethical  force  in  the  development  of  human- 
kind. 

I  have  said,  speaking  for  my  sex,  that  the  eternal 
feminine  can  never  be  ours  to  possess.  But  as  in  the 
case  of  spendthrift  heirs  with  prudent  trustees,  the 
whole  income  is  for  us  to  squander  while  the  real 
owners  of  that  most  precious  of  all  capitals  have  only 
the  doubtful  privilege  of  maintaining  and  investing 
it  for  us  to  expend.  In  what  manner  is  this  unfail- 
ing income  paid  over  to  us — as  a  rule — ungrateful 
beneficiaries?  It  is  given,  in  the  first  place,  through 
our  blood ;  for  one  of  the  many  extraordinary  privi- 
leges of  boys  is  to  "favor"  (if  one  may  use  that  most 
expressive  Yankee  word)  their  mothers.  Next,  the 
income  is  paid  in  the  form  of  good  precepts  poured 
unceasingly  by  mother,  aunts,  grandmothers,  pains- 
taking school-teachers  and  candid  sisters  into  our 
capacious  and  unheeding  ears.  Thirdly,  the  in- 
come takes  the  shape  of  good  example  given  us, 
not  by  the  aunts  and  grandmothers,  who  spoil  us,  or 
by  the  school-mistresses,  who  harry  us,  or  by  the  sis- 
ters, who  infuriate  us;  but  by  the  silent  instances 
of  tenderness,  of  heavenly  unselfishness,  of  "that  firm 
love  which  chasteneth"  given  to  us  night  and  day  by 
those  true  mothers  of  whom  the  world  is  full.  Again, 
that  income  comes  to  us  through  chivalry,  which  is 
aroused  in  us  by  mother-love  and  which,  as  adoles- 
cence progresses,  is  transferred  from  her  to  that 
sweetheart  with  whose  impossible  perfections  every 
youth  having  a  spark  of  imagination  endows  some 
girl, — or  series  of  young  women.     But  the  income 


The  Eternal  Feminine  187 


of  the  eternal  feminine  comes  to  us  far  more  subtly 
and  abidingly  through  the  fact  that  our  early  years 
are  spent  mainly  in  the  company  and  under  the 
influence  of  women,  and  that  our  thoughts  and  feel- 
ings— profoundly  as  the  man  in  us  may  think  it 
despises  them — are  really  women's  thoughts  and 
women's  feelings.  That  tincture  which  the  child  and 
boy  receives  and  which  he  never  can  eradicate  from 
his  nature  is  the  very  essence  of  the  eternal  feminine. 
The  male  point  of  view,  because  of  this,  is  in  each 
generation  fundamentally  modified  by  the  feminine 
way  of  looking  at  life.  Therefore  when  a  man,  out- 
laged  by  the  protean  sensualities  of  life,  sickened  by 
the  manifold  ugliness  of  existence,  disgusted  by  the 
mean  wickedness  of  human  intercourse,  made  cynical 
by  the  hypocrisies  of  both  saints  and  sinners,  is  sorely 
tempted  to  give  up  striving  and  hoping  and  believ- 
ing, the  feminine  in  him, — illogical,  unreasoning, 
careless  of  past  experience  and  heedless  of  future  dif- 
ficulties— goes  winging  up  to  those  absurd  ideals 
which  never  can  be  reached,  but  which,  nevertheless, 
are  the  celestial  magnets  that  uplift  mankind.  All  the 
altruism  in  the  world — and  there  is  more  now  than 
ever  before — all  the  unselfish  love  of  one's  fellows, 
all  those  yearnings  towards  impossible  good,  all  the 
hitching  of  lowly  wagons  to  unreachable  stars,  are 
due  to  that  element  in  us  which  we  cannot  describe, 
cannot  define,  cannot  analyze,  but  which  we  know 
as  the  eternal  feminine. 

Childish  innocence  is  not  mere  ignorance  of  evil ; 
it  is  the  original  fund  of  good  born  with  every  one. 
To  preserve  as  far  as  possible  and  to  utilize  to  the 


1 88  New  England  Conscience 

highest  degree  this  primal  innocence  is  the  really  im- 
portant business  of  all  education.  The  conserver  of 
that  innocence  is  the  eternal  feminine  implanted  in 
the  child  by  the  mother's  influence,  and  preserved  and 
established  in  the  youth  by  that  complex  emotion 
which  is  called  true  love. 

The  story  is  told  of  a  city  "tough,"  on  trial  for 
vagrancy,  who  swore  that  he  had  no  parents.  "Why," 
said  the  judge,  pointing  to  a  drunken  creature  sit- 
ting in  the  courtroom,  "that  woman  says  she  is  your 
mother."  "Sure,"  replied  the  boy,  "she's  my  mother 
all  right;  but  she  ain't  the  kind  o'  mother  a  feller's 
got  a  right  ter  have."  That  waif  touched  the  very 
centre  of  this  problem  of  morality.  A  fellow  who 
hasn't  the  right  sort  of  mother  has  but  a  sorry  chance 
of  turning  out  well.  The  mother  may  not,  and  need 
not,  be  very  wise ;  she  need  not  be  of  the  anxious 
kind  that  dogs  his  footsteps ;  she  may  well  be  one  of 
those  whom  the  world  calls  stern ;  but  if  she  be  a 
true  woman,  if  she  have  that  seventh  sense  which 
comes  with  maternity,  if  she  have  but  little  more  than 
the  primitive  instincts  of  the  dam, — then,  in  greater 
or  less  measure,  she  is  the  sort  of  mother  a  "feller's 
got  a  right  to  have"  and  that  son  will  receive  and 
retain,  through  her,  as  he  can  in  no  other  way,  the 
major  part  of  that  moral  equipment  and  that  ethical 
incentive  which  are  to  make  his  life  worth  while. 

Says  Tennyson : 

"...     From  earlier  than  I  know 
Immersed  in  rich  foreshadowings  of  the  world, 
I  loved  (a  ) woman     .     .     .     one 


The  Eternal  Feminine  189 

Not  learned,  save  in  gracious  household  ways 
Not  perfect,  nay,  but  full  of  tender  wants, 
No  Angel,  but  a  dearer  thing,  all  dipt 
In  Angel  instincts,  breathing  Paradise, 
Interpreter  between  the  Gods  and  man    .    .    . 

Happy  he 
With  such  a  mother !   Faith  in  womankind 
Beats  with  his  blood,  and  trust  in  all  things  high 
Comes  easy  to  him,  and  tho'  he  trip  and  fall 
He  shall  not  blind  his  soul  with  clay." 

Death,  or  worse,  robs  some  boys  of  the  first  and 
greatest  influence  of  the  eternal  feminine, — that 
which  should  be  exerted  through  the  love  of  mother 
and  son ;  but  to  no  normal  youth  is  the  second  influ- 
ence of  femininity — that  which  comes  through  adora- 
tion for  some  transfigured  sweetheart — wholly  de- 
nied. It  may  be  but  poor  Hodge  grinning  through 
a  horse-collar,  it  may  be  but  the  stammering  worship 
of  a  cub  for  some  woman  old  enough  to  be  his  moth- 
er, it  may  be  but  the  frosty  thawing,  late  in  life,  of 
some  seemingly  hopeless  bachelor;  yet  in  the  life 
of  almost  no  man  is  the  experience  entirely  un- 
known. 

This  second  phase  of  the  eternal  feminine,  this 
love  of  a  man  for  a  woman,  is,  of  course,  the  main 
foundation  of  literature,  of  art,  and  of  that  royal 
romancing  to  which,  very  mistakenly,  we  limit  his- 
tory. The  widely  read  book  without  a  love  mo- 
tive is  as  rare  as  the  historical  event  wherein  one  may 
not  confidently  "seek  the  woman."  Yet,  in  most  of 
those  million  real  and  imagined  instances,  how  crude 


igo  New  England  Conscience 


and  clumsy, — yes,  how  vulgar — is  the  analysis  of  the 
true  influence  and  the  actual  efEect  of  the  eternal 
feminine.  To  fathom  and  describe  real  love  is  a 
task  requiring  transcending  genius,  a  task  of  which 
only  a  few  men,  like  Dante,  Shakespeare  and  Goethe 
have  been  capable.  The  lesser  men  writers  (except- 
ing a  few  like  Meredith)  and  especially  the  lesser 
women  writers,  confuse  genuine  love  and  its  influ- 
ence with  its  counterfeits — lust,  jealousy,  self-seek- 
ing, vanity,  the  mere  strut  of  the  male,  and  their  long 
train  of  evils.  Real  love,  in  its  modesty,  its  purity, 
its  unselfishness,  its  self-abnegation,  its  worship,  its 
moral  exaltation,  is  as  remote  from  the  simian  in- 
trigues of  the  popular  novel  as  Heaven  is  from  the 
city  slum.  Real  love  does  not  love  a  woman,  it  loves 
an  ideal ;  and  in  so  far  as  the  personification  of  that 
ideal,  the  actual  woman  upon  whose  shoulders,  so  to 
speak,  its  mantle  falls,  approximates  to  or  comes 
short  of  that  ideal,  the  man's  life  is  made  or  marred. 
As  far  as  concerns  the  real  things  of  life, — character, 
moral  strength,  unselfishness,  right  ambition,  altru- 
ism,— the  school  of  the  boy  is  not  in  the  schoolroom, 
it  should  be  in  the  home ;  and  the  true  college  of 
those  enduring  qualities  is  not  in  Harvard  or  Yale 
or  any  other  high  institution  of  learning,  it  is  in  the 
discipline  of  a  man's  first — and  generally  his  last — 
genuine  love  experience. 

I  would  not  imply,  of  course,  that  falling  in  love  is 
the  beginning  and  end  of  existence ;  what  I  do  main- 
tain is  that  whether  a  man  is  to  have  a  large  nature 
or  a  small  one,  whether  he  is  to  be  a  dynamo  or  a 
vegetable,  whether  or  not  he  is  to  possess  that  love 


The  Etcriicil  liiiiiiiinc  191 


of  mankind,  that  eagerness  to  serve  and  uplift  his 
fellows  which  is  what  counts  in  life,  depends  enor- 
mously upon  the  purity  of  his  ideal  of  the  eternal 
feminine  and  upon  the  measure  in  which  that  ideal 
is  realized  in  the  woman  he  loves.  The  perfection  of 
the  ideal  depends  superlativcl\  upon  the  boy's  moth- 
er; the  degree  of  that  ideal's  realization  rests  almost 
solely  with  the  woman  to  whom  he  dedicates  his 
heart. 

It  may  be  frankly  acknowledged  that  the  ordinary 
bo)'  is  prurient  and  somewhat  foul-minded.  If,  how- 
ever, his  parents  are  fairly  wise,  if  his  boy  friends  are 
wholesome  and  his  girl  friends  decent,  this  disquiet- 
ing phase  in  a  boy's  life — which,  after  all,  is  mainly 
physiological — will  pass  and  leave  him  fundamentally 
unstained.  But  he  does  not  traverse  the  next  crisis 
so  easily.  That  crisis,  called  "falling  in  love,"  comes 
at  least  once  before  he  has  reached  his  majority,  and 
while  it  has  many  foolish  phnsc<  and  accompani- 
ments, it  is  generall)',  nevertheless,  the  crucial  and 
determining  experience  of  a  man's  whole  life.  For 
adolescence  is  the  second  birth — to  use  Dr.  Hall's 
apt  phrase — of  a  man,  the  birth  into  moral  and 
spiritual  life;  and  falling  in  love  is  to  that  spiritual 
infancy  what  walking  and  talking  are  to  genuine 
babyhood.  If  a  youth  gets  safely  through  that  crit- 
ical period,  if  he  finds  a  woman  who  not  only  just 
then  but  for  all  their  lives  will  preserve  and  strength- 
en his  moral  side ;  or  if,  thwarted  or  disillusioned  in 
his  affections,  he  rises  above  instead  of  succumbing 
to  the  blow,  his  future  usefulness  and  satisfaction  in 
life  are  almost  certainly  assured.     But  if,  hurt  in  his 


192  New  England  Conscience 

pride  and  disenchanted  of  his  visions,  he  becomes 
cynical,  reckless,  and  unambitious,  there  are  imme- 
diatelj^  bred  in  him  selfishness,  sensuality,  moral  lazi- 
ness and  rank  materialism, — and  another  child  of 
God  has  become  indentured  to  the  devil. 

It  is  a  just  criticism  of  contemporary  novels  and 
plays  that  an  inhabitant  of  Mars,  reading  the  one 
and  witnessing  the  other,  would  conclude  that  our 
minds  dwell  ceaselessly  upon  sex  problems ;  whereas, 
we  well  know,  the  normal  man  or  worr^n  is  mainly 
busy  with  quite  other  affairs.  Yet,  while  the  healthy, 
manly  man  is  little  concerned  with  sex,  it  is  nev- 
ertheless true  that — except  for  some  very  rare  re- 
ligious upheaval — the  great  emotions  of  his  life,  those 
v/hich  lift  him  out  of  egoism,  materialism  and  the 
almighty  dollar,  are  sex  emotions,  and  that  those  agi- 
tations are  most  violent,  least  understood,  and  farth- 
est reaching  during  adolescence.  If,  in  that  time  of 
storm  and  stress,  that  youth  has  not  the  anchorage  of 
love  for  his  mother  and  chivalry  towards  women : 
if,  having  created  the  image,  as  most  youth  do,  of 
an  ideal  woman  to  be  worshipped  and  obeyed,  he 
finds  the  young  women  of  his  environment  too  far 
below  that  standard  of  perfection, — then  it  is  almost 
certain  that,  whatever  his  physical  and  mental  prow- 
ess, morally  and  spiritually  that  youth  will  go  to 
wreck.  In  reading  that  extraordinary  book,  "The 
Ordeal  of  Richard  Feverel,"  one  gains  some  notion 
of  what  strong  youth, — young  men  who  are  sure  to 
amount  to  something  very  good  or  very  bad  in  the 
world — go  through  with  in  this  period  when,  to  the 
outward  eye,  they  are  merely  awkward  and  taciturn 


The  Eternal  Feminine  1 93 


or  disagreeably  voluble.  Like  the  shoppers  in  Paris 
who  gayly  walked  the  boulevards  unconscious  that,  a 
few  blocks  away,  hundreds  of  human  beings,  with 
every  shade  of  courage  and  of  cowardice,  were  fight- 
ing for  life  in  the  burning  Charity  Bazaar,  we  adults 
go  heedless  on,  unconscious  or  forgetful  that  all 
around  us  are  callow  youth  fighting  with  every  de- 
gree of  courage,  or  yielding  with  every  shade  of  cow- 
ardice, in  the  battle  for  self-salvation. 

Fathers  and  mothers,  however,  have  no  right  to  be 
heedless.  The  former's  memory,  the  latter's  instinct, 
should  not  permit  them  to  leave  the  boy,  unprepared 
and  unsupported,  to  win  or  lose  the  battle  as  he  can. 
And  woe  to  them  if  they  rush  in  at  the  eleventh  hour 
and  expect  to  accomplish,  by  a  day's  prayers,  en- 
treaties and  commands,  that  to  which  they  should 
have  given  eighteen  or  twenty  years  of  ceaseless  en- 
ergy. The  father  who  keeps  spiritually  aloof  from 
his  son  until  that  boy  is  approaching  manhood  and 
then  dares  to  talk  to  him  of  such  things  as  love  is 
certain  to  be  flouted, — as  he  deserves  to  be.  The 
mother  who  presumes  to  dictate  her  son's  choice  in 
his  affections  when  she  herself  has  given  him  no  right 
example  of  womanhood  has  but  herself  to  blame  if  he 
breaks  her  heart  by  his  choosing.  To  assert  that  a 
mother  who  stays  at  home  with  her  boys  and  girls 
makes  herself  their  drudge  is  to  be  blind  to  the  mean- 
ing of  real  motherhood.  It  is  true  that  a  cook  can 
prepare  the  children's  dinners  and  that  a  sempstress 
can  mend  their  clothes ;  but  can  a  cook  fit  a  boy  for 
the  crisis  of  adolescence,  can  a  sempstress  mend  his 
ruined  career? 


194  Neiu  England  Conscience 


There  is  no  question  of  women's  rights  and  wom- 
en's privileges  excepting  the  right  to  be  of  the  most 
value  in  the  world,  the  privilege  of  using  her  special 
powers  to  the  highest  good  of  mankind.  Much  of 
the  world's  work  may  be  done  by  either  man  or 
woman  ;  but  there  are  certain  duties  which  only  one 
or  the  other  can  perform.  And  if  a  woman  have 
children,  her  immediate  and  paramount  duty  is  to 
keep  her  covenant  with  God  by  giving  those  boys 
and  girls  the  best  bringing  up  that  it  is  possible  for 
them  to  have.  In  the  matter  of  that  one  duty,  no 
other  person  or  agency  can  take  her  place,  for  none 
other  can  get  the  moral  hold  which,  because  of  the 
child's  early  and  entire  dependence  upon  her,  she 
is  able  to  secure.  The  community  cares  nothing  about 
the  individual  child ;  the  school  can  deal  with  chil- 
dren only  on  one  side;  the  church  can  secure  but  a 
precarious  hold  upon  a  small  proportion  of  them ; 
and  the  best  intentioned  of  fathers,  even  if  he  for- 
sook his  special  duties  as  the  provider,  would  be  but 
a  feeble  substitute  for  the  right  kind  of  mother. 

Human  customs  help  greatly  in  the  bringing  up  of 
girls,  for  those  conventions  keep  the  daughters  close 
at  home,  sheltered  from  serious  contact  with  the  evil 
things  of  life.  Boys,  however,  early  and  properly, 
escape  the  mother's  immediate  control,  going  where 
she  cannot  follow,  learning  from  sources  that  she 
cannot  supervise,  meeting  outer  contaminations  and 
inner  temptations  which  she  can  hardly  comprehend. 
Yet  boys  need  moral  guidance  even  more  than  girls, 
and,  great  as  are  the  power  and  the  duty  of  the  father 
in  furnishing  that  moral  education,  the  responsibil- 


The  Eternal  Feminine  195 


ity  and  influence  of  the  mother,  for  reasons  already 
indicated,  are  very  much  greater.  And  she  must  ful- 
fil that  duty  and  exercise  that  control  largely  through 
the  power  of  the  eternal  feminine,  which  permits  her 
to  control  the  boy,  though  out  of  her  sight,  and  to 
hold  him  without  his  suspecting  the  anchorage  of  the 
despised  apron-strings. 

In  at  least  four  ways  will  the  eternal  feminine 
keep  the  adolescent  youth  straight  and  strong  and 
self-respecting.  The  first  is  through  conscious  wor- 
ship of  and  loyalty  to  his  mother — provided  she  has 
been  the  "sort  o'  mother  a  feller's  got  a  right  ter 
have" — holding  him  back,  as  would  her  actual  pres- 
ence, from  what  he  knows  would  hurt  her.  The 
second  way  (if  he  has  been  rightly  reared)  is  through 
chivalry  towards  all  women  and  through  a  dim  un- 
derstanding that  some  time,  not  far  ahead,  the 
eternal  feminine  will  be  made  concrete  for  him,  and 
that  every  moral  transgression  will  be  a  hideous 
and  perhaps  insuperable  obstacle  in  the  path  to  that 
woman's  love.  The  third  way  is  through  the  un- 
conscious influence  of  the  girls  and  women  that  he 
meets,  who,  if  they  have  been  rightly  brought  up, 
should  fulfil  to  a  reasonable  degree  his  boyish  visions 
and  idealizations  of  the  sex.  The  fourth  and  final 
way  is  through  the  wholly  unperceived,  because  in- 
grained, promptings  of  the  eternal  feminine  wrought 
into  him  by  years  of  loving  companionship  with  his 
mother, — promptings  which,  like  wings,  lift  him 
above  dirty,  evil  and  sordid  things  and  keep  him  in 
the  noble  company  of  those  who  obey  Paul's  injunc- 
tion:     "Whatsoever    things    are    true,    whatsoever 


196  New  England  Conscience 


things  are  honest,  whatsoever  things  are  just,  what- 
soever things  are  pure,  whatsoever  things  are  lovely, 
whatsoever  things  are  of  good  report  .  .  .  think 
on  those  things." 

As  the  possessor  of  this  priceless  power  of  the 
eternal  feminine,  this  power  which  inspires  and  pre- 
serves most  of  what  is  best  in  humankind,  woman, 
without  flattery,  is  unquestionably  the  superior  of 
man  and  is  the  predominant  force  in  compelling  the 
upward  and  onward  progress  of  the  world.  What 
folly  for  her,  then,  to  waste  her  strength  in  seek- 
ing so-called  equal  rights  in  the  matter  of  those  out- 
ward, material  relations  which  are  of  such  minor 
consequence  in  the  eternal  scheme.  Could  she  have 
political  and  economic  equality  with  men,  could  she 
be  hail-fellow  with  them  and  still  retain  the  eternal 
feminine,  then  speed  the  day  of  her  alleged  emanci- 
pation !  Seemingly,  however,  the  possession,  at  once, 
of  both  masculine  rights  and  feminine  power  is,  and 
always  will  be,  quite  impossible. 

A  woman  is  not  inherently  incompetent  to  exer- 
cise the  franchise,  to  conduct  a  commercial  enterprise, 
or  to  live  the  free  life  of  a  man.  In  the  face  of  so 
many  examples  to  the  contrary,  especially  in  view  of 
the  general  belief  that  hers  is  the  keener  and  shrewd- 
er mind,  such  a  contention  would  be  ridiculous. 
Great  questions  like  this,  however,  must  be  looked 
at  as  a  whole;  and  the  fact  must  be  faced  that  the 
majority  of  women  marry,  and  that  to  them  and  to 
their  children  the  duties  of  motherhood  involve  in- 
finitely more  than  do  those  of  fatherhood  to  the 
other  parent.    Were  it  possible  to  limit  the  franchise 


The  Eternal  Feminine  197 


to  spinsters,  childless  wives  and  dowagers,  there 
could  be  no  serious  objection  to  granting  women  po- 
litical equality.  But  in  any  extension  of  feminine  ac- 
tivities the  mothers  must  be,  of  course,  included; 
and  for  them  to  enter  political  life — which,  if  they 
are  not  to  imperil  democracy,  involves  vastly  more 
than  the  mere  casting  of  a  ballot — either  the  new 
duties  must  be  shirked  or  badly  performed  (in  either 
event  throwing  political  power  into  the  hands  of 
those  least  fit)  or  the  old  duties  must  be  neglected, 
to  the  incalculable  damage  of  the  boys  and  girls, 
whose  moral  up-bringing  means  more  to  the  progress 
of  civilization  than  all  the  ballots  ever  cast,  all  the 
taxes  ever  paid,  and  all  the  laws  ever  put  upon  the 
statute-books. 

Women  in  politics  might  enact  much  useful  legis- 
lation ;  but  the  curse  of  a  republic  is  the  prevailing 
notion  that  moral  evils  can  be  cured  by  laws  and 
ordinances ;  whereas  history  and  personal  experience 
teach  that  the  main  hope  01  civilization  is  in  the 
arousing  of  a  keener  sense,  among  all  men  and 
women,  of  their  individual,  personal  responsibility. 

The  single  way,  moreover,  in  which  that  sense  of 
personal  responsibility  for  the  welfare  of  the  com- 
munity and  the  state,  the  sense  that  we  are  our  own 
and  our  brothers'  moral  keepers,  can  be  aroused  in 
the  general  mass  of  men  is  for  it  to  be  ingrained  in 
boys  and  girls  as  they  grow  up.  And  the  forces 
which  can  adequately  instill  that  sense  of  responsi- 
bility are,  preeminently,  the  home  forces:  the  home 
atmosphere,  the  home  work,  the  relations  of  the  fam- 
ily, the  conscious  and  unconscious  lessons  in  duty, 


iqB  Neiv  England  Conscience 

self-sacrifice,  honor  and  kindred  virtues  given  by  the 
father,  mother  and  other  members  of  the  house.  The 
heart  of  that  little  world  in  which  men  and  women 
are  to  be  trained  for  the  great  world,  the  headmis- 
tress of  this  school  of  the  home  which,  from  the 
ethical  and  spiritual  standpoint,  signifies  more  to  the 
growing  child  than  all  the  public  institutions  of 
learning  ever  created,  the  power  which,  from  thence, 
literally  and  in  the  best  sense  rules  the  destinies  of 
mankind,  is  she  who  keeps  the  home,  determines  its 
atmosphere,  and  directs  its  energies.  Were  all  the 
good  women  in  the  country  to  get  together  and  to 
secure  the  right  to  revise  all  the  statutes  and  elect 
all  the  officials,  their  work  would  be  not  only  futile, 
it  would  be  subversive  of  civilization,  if,  in  accom- 
plishing this  political  revolution  they  should  at  the 
same  time,  as  they  would  be  obliged  to  do,  abdicate 
that  field  in  which  superlatively  the  work  of  char- 
acter-building, of  moral  development,  of  instilling 
respect  for  law,  of  training  to  govern  one's  self  and 
others  is  and  must  be  done, — the  field  of  the  individ- 
ual home.  Like  the  dog  in  the  fable,  those  good  women 
would  have  dropped  the  bone  of  real  power  in  at- 
tempting to  seize  its  counterfeit  image  of  political 
dominion. 

Women  in  business  might  raise  in  some  degree 
commercial  standards  and  they  would  certainly  se- 
cure a  larger  measure  of  economic  freedom.  But, 
aside  from  the  fact  already  emphasized  that  a  woman 
cannot  engage  at  one  and  the  same  time  in  making 
laws — or  money — and  making  human  characters,  the 
wholesale    injection    of    women    into    industrialism 


The  Eternal  Feminine  199 


means  greater  competition,  lowered  wages,  and  conse- 
quent social  degradation.  The  fact  that  economic 
failure  means  suffering  for  wife  and  children  is  a 
hard  and  galling  spur  to  men ;  but  that  cruel  goad 
has  been  a  chief  incentive  to  moral  as  well  as  indus- 
trial advancement. 

As  to  the  girl  who  tries  to  be  a  man  by  aping 
his  small  vices,  by  smoking,  swearing,  and  practising, 
in  Portia's  words,  "a  thousand  raw  tricks  of  those 
bragging  Jacks,"  she  is  an  object  as  pitiful  as  is  the 
white-faced  schoolboy  who,  having  affronted  his 
stomach  with  a  strong  cigar,  thinks  he  has  thereby 
made  himself  a  man. 

A  secondan',  but  scarcely  less  serious,  effect  of 
this  so-called  emancipation  would  be  to  cheapen 
woman  in  the  eyes  of  man,  to  destroy  for  him,  there- 
fore, the  enormous  uplifting  power  of  the  eternal 
feminine.  No  one  today  admires  the  languishing 
female  of  our  grandmother's  time  and  most  men  be- 
lieve that  every  girl  should  fit  herself  for  self-support 
so  that  she  may  have  the  strengthening  conscious- 
ness of  economic  independence ;  but  for  men  and 
women  to  wrangle  upon  the  hustings,  for  the  arts, 
and  worse,  of  woman  to  be  added  to  the  fund  of  po- 
litical bribery  already  at  command,  for  women  to 
enter  into  the  feverish  scramble  for  business,  and  for 
them  to  meet  there  and  elsewhere  every  man  as 
men  now  meet  one  another,  would  break  down  all 
barriers — except  perhaps  the  final  one — and  chivalry, 
romance,  emotional  devotion,  all  that  service  of  Ja- 
cob for  Rachel  which  develops  a  man  and  makes 
him  other  than  the  beasts  that  perish,  would  be  gone. 


200  New  England  Conscience 

The  so-called  subjection  (though  it  is  actually 
the  elevation)  of  women  is  rooted  in  reasons  much 
deeper  than  those  of  her  physical  weakness  and  the 
selfishness  of  men.  She  suffers  for  sinning  as  no  man 
is  made  to  suffer  in  order  that  she  may  be  forced 
to  set  high  standards  of  morality, — standards  to 
which  all  society  is  slowly  but  continuously  rising. 
She  is  made  comparatively  weak  and  dependent  in 
order  that  there  must  be  a  home  to  shelter  her, 
that  home  which,  as  a  moral  microcosm,  is  the  fun- 
damental unit  of  society  and  the  essential  school  of 
individual  virtue.  She  is  subject  to  centuries-old  con- 
ventions in  order  that  she  may  be  kept  enough  apart 
from  man  for  the  element  of  glamor,  of  worship,  of 
aspiration  to  be  worthy  of  her,  to  enter  into  a  youth's 
relations  with  the  other  sex.  Finally,  she  is  tied  to 
her  children  in  order  that,  in  the  long  years  of  that 
blessed  servitude,  she  may  infuse  into  them,  both 
boys  and  girls,  that  elixir  of  the  eternal  feminine 
which  is  the  inspirer  and  the  conserver  of  those 
eternal  hopes,  faiths,  and  uplifting  illusions  which 
carry  mankind  ever  nearer  to  the  Everlasting  Good. 


Madame  de  Maintenon  20I 

XI 

Madame  de  Maintenon 

THE  reign  of  Louis  XIV,  one  of  the 
great  spectacles  of  the  modern  world, 
divides  itself  into  three  dramas:  the  first, 
a  farce-comedy  of  intrigue ;  the  second,  a 
melodrama  of  extravagance  and  con- 
quest; the  third,  a  tragedy  of  defeat  and  death. 
The  first  act — in  which  Louis  himself  had  little 
part — was  the  last  struggle  of  feudalism,  a  desperate 
clutching  of  the  nobility  at  their  remnants  of  inde- 
pendent power.  Without  steadiness,  without  co- 
hesion, mere  puppets  in  the  hands  of  jealous  women, 
the  provincial  nobles,  heretofore  petty  kings  in  their 
power  and  splendor,  made  a  last  vain  resistance  to 
the  Italian,  Mazarin,  who  for  selfish  ends  was  sub- 
ordinating all  France  to  Paris  and  the  court.  The 
second  act  was  a  pompous  show  of  tasteless  pleasure, 
of  real  and  mimic  war,  of  unprovoked  conquest.  It 
was  a  pageant  of  kingliness,  graced  by  sycophants  and 
supported  by  sweating  millions  of  unheeded  super- 
numeraries. In  the  third  act  the  scenery  begins 
to  totter.  The  king,  tragic  now,  struts  and  swaggers 
to  ever  fainter  applause.  His  theatre  grows  smaller 
and  more  shabby.  Worst  of  all,  those  actors  who 
had  been  trained  by  Bossuet  and  by  Fenelon  to  fill 
his  role,  die  in  quick  succession,  leaving  Louis  and  his 
baby  great-grandson  alone,  the  one  too  old,  the  other 
too  young,  to  play  the  part  of  King. 


202  New  England  Conscience 


Louis  XIV  had  nominally  begun  to  rule  in  1643, 
when  he  was  five  years  old.  The  will  of  his  father, 
Louis  XIII,  no  stronger  after  death  than  before,  had 
been  set  aside,  and  Anne  of  Austria,  with  Mazarin, 
had  assumed  the  regency.  Their  usurpation,  the 
Queen's  desertion  of  those  who,  throughout  her 
stormy  quarrels  with  Richelieu,  had  taken  her  part, 
the  bitter  disappointment  of  that  hungry  faction 
which,  sure  of  restored  power  under  the  queen-reg- 
ent, was  already  known  as  les  importants,  the  great- 
er and  less  intrigue  of  a  corrupt  court, — all  combined 
to  precipitate  one  of  the  maddest,  absurdest  civil 
strifes  in  history,  the  wars  of  the  Fronde.  On  the 
one  side  of  the  conflict  was  Anne — Madame  Anne 
the  people  rudely  called  her — clinging  to  the  new 
cardinal-minister,  Mazarfn,  with  a  love  as  fierce  as 
had  been  her  hate  of  the  dead  cardinal-minister,  Rich- 
elieu; sending  him  into  exile  as  their  enemies  be- 
came too  threatening;  finding  it  impossible  to  live 
as  well  as  to  rule,  without  him ;  calling  him  back  to 
substitute  his  now  welcome  abuse  of  power  for  her 
utter  lack  of  power ;  and  always  alienating  old 
friends  while  never  gaining  new.  On  all  sides  of  the 
controversy,  sometimes  for  the  queen  and  sometimes 
against  her,  were  the  Parlement  of  Paris,  quarrel- 
some lawyers  with  no  positively  defined  powers  and 
no  capacity  except  for  ceaseless  meddling.  In  the 
affray,  also,  were  the  numerous  Orleans  family,  fight- 
ing for  their  rights  of  regency  and  succession.  The 
Archbishop  of  Paris,  too,  and  the  feudal  nobles  took 
a  share  of  blood  and  plunder  as  opportunity  offered. 
And  back  of  it  all,  plotting,  lying,  deceiving,  com- 


i^p^^SS^' 


Madame  de  Maintknon  and  the 
Duchess  of  Burgundy 


Madame  de  Maintenon  203 

iiianding,  and  countennanding,  were  the  DuclicsaC 
dc  Longueville.  Mme.  de  Chevreuse.  the  ridiculous 
Grande  Mademoiselle  and  a  swarm  of  other  intrigu- 
ing noblewomen,  playing  at  politics  and  bringing 
upon  France  such  death  and  ruin  and  starvation  as 
even  that  revolutionary  country  has  seldom  known. 
The  whole  strife  was  a  war  of  women,  a  tragic  farce 
of  history,  in  which  the  actors  conspired  openly, 
hurled  deadly  curses  with  reassuring  winks,  kissed  in 
the  morning  and  fought  at  night,  laid  waste  and 
plundered  indiscriminately,  sister  arrayed  against 
brother,  mother  against  son,  servant  against  master. 
Yet  those  wars  of  the  Fronde,  brought  about  partly 
by  the  desperation  of  a  dying  feudalism,  partly  by 
hatred  of  a  Spanish  queen  and  an  Italian  prime 
minister,  wrought  two  important  changes.  They 
destroyed  the  independent  power  of  the  nobility; 
they  centered  the  life  of  France  at  Paris.  Thence 
resulted  the  unified,  bureaucratic  government  which, 
notwithstanding  its  restless  changing  of  rulers, 
France  has  ever  since  maintained.  The  wars  of  the 
Fronde  not  only  made  possible  the  autocracy  of 
Louis  XIV,  they  prepared  the  way  also  for  the  Rev- 
olution and  for  Napoleon.  Only  to  a  country  ruled, 
as  France  is,  by  a  city,  would  have  been  possible 
any  of  those  three  phenomena. 

Throughout  these  civil  conflicts  and  for  some  years 
afterwards,  the  young  king  remained  indifferent  ex- 
cept to  this  royal  pleasures,  letting  Mazarin  rule 
for  him  as  Richelieu  had  reigned  for  his  predecessor. 
But  when,  in  Louis'  twenty-third  year,  Mazarin 
died,  the  king  coldly  dismissed  his  memory,  dismissed, 


204  New  England  Conscience 


too,  the  iniquitous  Fouquet  who  had  stolen  even 
more  than  had  the  greedy  Italian,  and  took  the  bur- 
dens of  state  directly  upon  himself.  More  than  this, 
by  good  judgment  or  good  luck,  he  put  the  plundered 
treasury  into  the  hands  of  that  honest  man  of  busi- 
ness, Colbert,  he  placed  Louvois — a  seventeenth  cen- 
tury Bismarck — in  the  ministry  of  war,  and  he  made 
Turenne  general  of  his  armies.  With  such  servants 
and  by  his  extraordinary  diligence,  by  his  bourgeois 
but  most  useful  love  of  detail,  by  his  real  genius  for 
absolute  monarchy,  Louis  brought  France  in  less 
than  twenty  years  after  Mazarin's  death,  to  its  high- 
est pitch  of  power  and  splendor.  His  methods  were 
not  exemplary,  the  proverbial  schoolboy  can  see  how 
temporary  his  greatness  was;  but,  at  that  stage  of 
civilization,  it  was  real  greatness,  and  it  was  a  true 
empire  over  which  the  "grand  monarch"  despotic- 
ally ruled.  Had  he  died  in  1680  he  would  have 
gone  into  history  as  one  of  the  few  real  Caesars ;  un- 
fortunately for  him  and  unhappily  for  Europe,  he 
reigned  seventy-two  instead  of  forty  years. 

With  the  exception  of  the  interval  between  1661 
and  1 715,  France  for  nearly  two  centuries  was  ruled 
by  ecclesiastics.  During  the  fifty-four  years  except- 
ed, she  was  governed  by  a  true  king  ruling,  however, 
"with  the  advice  and  consent"  of  women.  Just  how 
far  Louis  Quatorze  was  guided  by  feminine  counsel 
it  is  impossible  to  determine;  but  to  one  woman, 
during  forty  years,  he  seldom  failed  to  turn  for  ap- 
proval, for  strength  in  adversity,  for  commendation 
in  triumph,  for  feminine  comfort,  for  masculine  ad- 
vice,— that   is,   to   the  Widow   Scarron,   known   as 


Madame  de  Maintenon  205 


Mme.  de  Maintenon.  Dollinger  calls  her  the  great- 
est woman  in  French  history.  St.  Simon,  with  the 
exaggeration  of  hate,  terms  her  an  "incredihle  witch, 
in  whose  hands  rested  politics,  diplomacy,  the  power 
of  reward,  of  condemnation,  of  pardon,  of  religion 
itself,  whose  victims  were  the  king  and  his  king- 
dom." The  Church  leaned  upon  her,  the  people 
suspected  her,  the  court  feared  but  could  not  flatter 
her,  and  Louis  himself,  brought  by  fortune  and  great 
ministers  to  an  imperial  authority  far  beyond  the 
control  of  his  own  limited  understanding,  regarded 
her  as  a  sort  of  external  brain  whose  sanction  gave 
his  royal  whims  and  fiats  the  tourh  of  intellect  need- 
ed to  make  them  absolutely  infallible. 

In  the  middle  of  the  seventeenth  century  social 
France  possessed  three  centres.  The  supreme  cen- 
tre, the  "dazzling  sun  of  Europe,"  as  Louis  was 
not  averse  to  being  called,  was  the  king  himself. 
Two  lesser  orbits  were  ruled  by  Ninon  de  Lenclos, 
the  famous  courtesan,  and  by  Mme.  de  Rambouillet, 
the  first  of  blue-stockings.  About  those  two  women 
gathered  all  the  wits,  men  about  town,  place-seekers, 
men  of  letters,  and  precieuses  to  whom  the  royal 
sunshine  was  not  always  available ;  and  the  recog- 
nized path  to  the  more  exclusive  Hotel  de  Ram- 
bouillet was  through  the  drawing-rooms  of  the  bril- 
liant and  perennial  Ninon.  A  leader  of  this  merry 
procession,  a  satyr  to  this  lovely  nymph,  was  the 
cynical,  deformed  comic  poet,  Scarron,  who,  no 
longer  young  and  apparently  approaching  his  grave, 
amazed  his  friends  in  1652  by  bringing  to  Ninon's 
salon  a  wife,  Franqoise  d'Aubigne. 


2o6  New  England  Conscience 

This  Frangoise,  afterwards  Mme.  de  Maintenun, 
had  passed  through  the  usual  troubled  childhood  of 
the  heroine  of  romance  and  herself  tells  us  that  the 
customary  prophecy  of  future  greatness  had  been 
made  regarding  her.  Of  good  lineage,  she  was  born 
in  prison.  Her  grandfather  was  the  great  Hugue- 
not, Agrippa  d'Aubigne;  but  her  father  was  the 
veriest  good-for-nothing,  and  her  mother,  a  jailor's 
daughter.  As  a  child  Francoise  was  carried  to  the 
West  Indies,  experiencing  every  peril  of  sea  and  mis- 
ery of  land.  Early  orphaned,  she  was  tossed  about 
from  one  relative  to  another,  torn  from  a  Protestant 
aunt  whom  she  loved,  and  banished  to  \\\?  vinegary 
household  of  a  Catholic  aunt  whom  she  liated,  seized 
in  turn  by  one  and  the  other  Christian  faith,  and 
regarded  by  both  merely  as  a  brand  to  be  saved  from 
the  burning.  With  no  dowry,  and  no  hope  of  one, 
with  no  vocation  for  the  convent,  3'et  seeing  no 
escape  from  it,  Francoise  \\  as  doubtless  ,ilad  of  the 
chance  to  marry  Scarron,  although  she  was  but  six- 
teen and  he  past  middle  age,  a  confirmed  invalid,  and 
hideous  to  look  upon.  For  eight  years,  faithfully  and 
tenderly,  she  nursed  this  cynical,  foul-speaking  crip- 
ple, restoring  to  him  perhaps  some  of  the  whole- 
someness  of  life  which  he  had  long  forgotten.  His 
death  left  her  a  young,  handsome,  but  discreet 
widow,  intellectual  if  not  witty,  a  welcome  visitor 
in  the  best  society  and  known  at  court. 

Meanwhile  the  royal  Jupiter  of  France,  tiring  of 
Louise  de  la  Valliere,  has  transferred  his  affections 
to  Mme.  de  Montespan.  Her  semi-royal  children  be- 
ing, as  yet,  politely  ignored,  must  be  educated  se- 


Madame  de  Alaintenon  207 


cretly ;  but  the  king;  is  determined  that  they  shall  be 
educated  well.  What  better  governess  for  them, 
thinks  Montespan,  than  Mme.  Scarron,  discretion 
personified,  well  taught,  with  perfect  manners,  and 
sufficiently  in  need  to  be  tempted  by  the  king's 
bounty  ?  The  proposition  is  made,  is  strenuously  op- 
posed, but  is  finally  accepted  in  deference  to  royal 
command.  Must  not  the  king  be  obeyed  ;  and  is  a 
woman  of  ambition,  as  Mme.  Scarron  confessed  her- 
self to  be,  to  begin  her  career  by  forfeiting  the  fa- 
vor of  the  greatest  of  monarchs?  Surely  not;  so  a 
house  with  convenient  back  entrances  is  taken,  the 
children  one  by  one  are  smuggled  in  :  since  few  ser- 
vants can  be  trusted,  Mme.  Scarron  assumes  much 
of  the  drudgery  herself;  de  Montespan  makes  fre- 
quent visits,  upsetting  the  children's  discipline  with 
her  spasmodic  affection  and  their  digestion  with  her 
lavished  comfits,  sometimes  violently  scolding,  some- 
times ardently  caressing  the  patient  governess,  by 
turns  exulting  and  repenting;  and  at  the  front  door 
enter  the  old  friends  of  the  Ninon  salon  and  the 
Rambouillet  salon,  wondering,  asking  no  questions, 
but  hastening  to  spread  most  scandalous  conjectures. 
A  difficult  life  in  itself;  made  doubly  so  by  the  early 
death  of  some  of  the  children  and  the  sickliness  of 
the  three  who  survive.  For  four  years  it  continues, 
until  even  Mme.  Scarron  begins  to  wonder  if  the 
game  is  worth  the  candle.  Perhaps  she  hints  of  this 
to  the  king ;  perhaps  it  is  only  his  own  sense  of  jus- 
tice that  impels  him,  in  1673,  to  acknowledge  these 
poor  children, — of  whom  Mme,  Scarron  had  grown 
desperately  fond  and  to  whom  no  mother  could  have 


2o8  New  England  Conscience 


been  more  devoted, — by  bringing  them  to  court.  If 
the  governess  expected  to  better  her  lot  by  transfer- 
ring herself  and  her  charges  to  the  palace,  she  greatly 
erred.  Not  only  was  she  now  brought  into  hourly 
contact  with  the  capricious,  childish,  imperious  Mmc. 
de  Montespan,  but  she  began  to  attract  the  danger- 
ous favor  of  Louis  who,  heretofore,  had  sneered  at 
her  as  a  blue  stocking,  not  hesitating  to  express  his 
aversion  to  her.  The  children's  good  training,  how- 
ever, Mme.  Scarron's  devotion  to  the  eldest,  (the 
crippled  Due  du  Maine)  and  the  strong  good  sense 
and  discretion  of  the  woman  herself  appealed  to  the 
king.  Soon  he  begins  markedly  to  notice  her,  with 
what  effect  upon  his  jealous  favorite  it  is  easy  to 
imagine.  Montespan,  fearful  of  Scarron's  power,  is 
yet  helpless  without  the  aid  of  it.  Realizing,  as  she 
learns  the  masterful  will  and  calm  tact  of  this  won- 
derful rival,  the  weakness  of  her  own  petty  arts 
and  seductions,  she  can  do  nothing  but  redouble  them, 
wearying  the  king  with  her  frantic  demonstrations. 
To  keep  Scarron  near  is  to  sign  her  own  death  war- 
rant, but  to  send  her  away  would  be,  she  fears,  in- 
stant self-execution.  So  Montespan  covers  her  chil- 
dren's tutor  with  reproaches,  at  one  hour  orders  her 
from  the  palace,  at  the  next  implores  her  to  remain, 
denounces  her  to  Louis  and  yet  begs  him  to  com- 
mand that  she  shall  stay.  Mme.  Scarron,  now  Mme. 
de  Maintenon  through  purchase  or  gift  of  that 
estate,  weeps,  protests,  tries  to  present  her  side  of  the 
quarrel,  threatens  instantly  to  depart,  but  does  not 
go.  There  is  rumor  of  personal  violence  between 
the  two  women.      Even  the  stern  Louvois  has  to  be 


Madame  de  Maintenon  209 


summoned  from  the  task  of  war-making  in  Europe 
to  the  problem  of  peace-making  within  the  palace. 
The  court  is  rent  with  factions,  and  the  unhappy- 
sycophants,  uncertain  of  the  outcome  of  the  affair, 
are  in  an  agony  of  indecision. 

What  a  comic  tragedy!  What  a  bedlam  of  con- 
flicting ambitions!  There  sits  the  poor  queen,  so 
much  a  cipher  that  none  thinks  of  her,  afraid  even 
to  talk  with  his  majesty  unless  Maintenon  be  by 
to  prompt  her;  there  rails  Montespan,  no  longer 
loved,  but  holding  the  king  by  the  fierceness  and 
clamorousness  of  her  jealousy,  hating  her  children's 
governess  and  yet  wretched  and  helpless  without  her ; 
there  flutters  the  silly  new  favorite.  Mile,  de  Fon- 
tanges,  so  puffed  with  pride  that  she  forgets  even  the 
ordinary  decencies ;  and  there  really  rules  Mme.  de 
Maintenon  herself,  torn  with  ever}'  emotion,  har- 
assed with  every  care,  trying  to  save  some  rags  of 
outward  affection  for  the  queen,  misunderstood  when 
she  counsels  Montespan  to  leave  the  court,  still  more 
misunderstood  when  she  seems  to  acquiesce  in  her  re- 
lations with  the  king,  finding  her  only  consolation  in 
the  affection  of  the  Due  du  Maine  and  yet  obliged 
to  use  even  this  little  fellow  as  a  weapon  of  warfare, 
praying  to  be  released  from  one  of  the  hardest 
positions  in  which  a  woman  was  ever  placed ;  and 
yet  so  fond  of  power,  so  hungry  for  the  notoriety  of 
this  palatial  self-sacrifice,  so  eager,  let  us  try  to 
believe,  to  bring  the  greatest  monarch  of  Chris- 
tendom back  to  Christian  living,  that  she  cannot  tear 
herself  away. 

Finally  the  clergy,   hitherto  subservient,   become 


2IO  New  England  Conscience 


aroused  to  the  scandal  of  a  king  who  sows  wild  oats 
at  fifty.  Eagerly  seconded  by  Maintenon,  they  try 
to  bring  Louis  to  a  sense  of  decency.  The  task  is 
not  easy;  and  the  storms  continue  within  the  royal 
household  until,  at  the  Dauphin's  marriage  in  1679, 
Mme.  de  Maintenon  is  made  lady-in-waiting  to  his 
princess.  So,  without  renouncing  that  royal  favor 
which  is  her  breath-of-life,  the  badgered  governess 
escapes  at  last  from  Montespan.  That  fierce,  unhap- 
py woman,  however,  through  pressure  of  the  Church 
and  Louis'  utter  weariness  of  her,  is  soon  discarded. 
From  this  time  until  early  in  1684,  when  she  be- 
came the  king's  wife,  de  Maintenon  filled  a  very  ex- 
traordinary position,  a  position  so  extraordinary  that, 
as  Mme.  de  Sevigne  has  said,  no  one  ever  occupied 
or  ever  will  occupy  such  another.  The  king  con- 
sulted her  in  everything,  obeyed  her  in  everything, 
even  to  the  point  of  showing  affection  towards  his 
wife,  until  the  death  of  that  poor  royal  shadow; 
thousands  of  envious  eyes  were  spying  upon  her, 
thousands  of  evil  tongues  were  longing  to  speak  ill 
of  her,  the  manners  of  the  times,  the  friends  who 
loved  her,  the  enemies  who  hated  her,  the  place- 
hunters  who  built  their  hopes  upon  her,  with  rare 
exceptions  the  clergy  who  should  have  sustained  her, 
were  all  leagued  to  force  her  into  taking  a  false 
step.  But  with  marvelous  coolness,  with  almost  su- 
perhuman adroitness,  with  no  help  except  perhaps 
that  of  her  confessor,  the  Abbe  Gobelin,  she  retained, 
without  stumbling,  her  wonderful  influence  over  the 
king,  and,  in  proper  time  after  the  queen's  death, 
made  herself  the  wife  of  the  greatest  monarch  in 


Madame  de  Maintenon  211 


Europe,  at  the  height  of  his  power,  when  he  might 
have  formed  any  alliance  that  he  chose.  The  fact  of 
the  marriage  is  no  longer  in  serious  dispute.  It 
took  place,  probably  on  the  12th  of  January,  1684, 
in  Notre  Dame,  at  midnight,  in  the  presence  of  wit- 
nesses and  with  the  sanction  of  the  Pope.  Mme.  de 
Maintenon  never  acknowledged  the  marriage,  she 
never  claimed  any  rights  as  queen,  every  scrap  of 
paper  that  might  bear  upon  the  matter  she  scru- 
pulously destroyed ;  yet  the  fact  that  she  was  Louis' 
wife  was  tacitly  acknowledged  then  and  is  accepted 
now.  Moreover,  during  the  thirty-two  years  of  their 
life  together  he  was  comparatively  faithful  to  her  and 
seemed  truly  to  love  and  to  honor  her.  By  force  of 
her  extraordinary  will  she  had  converted  him  to  so- 
ber living  and  to  an  active — indeed,  a  too  active — 
piety. 

But  what  a  life  she  led !  What  a  price  she  had 
to  pay  for  her  power!  There  is  no  affectation  in  the 
cry  of  mental  suffering,  of  deathly  ennui,  of  the  "van- 
ity of  vanities"  which  fills  her  letters !  She  had  shak- 
en off,  it  is  true,  de  Montespan ;  however  equivocal 
her  position,  she  was  justified  in  her  own  conscience; 
she  had  brought  Louis  to  a  moral  life ;  she  was  mak- 
ing him  really  a  "Most  Christian  King."  But  what 
an  existence  for  a  woman  of  brains,  "to  amuse,"  as 
she  says,  "a  man  who  was  no  longer  amusable;"  to 
be  bound  absolutely  to  the  will  of  a  despot  who  de- 
lighted in  the  minutest  details  of  etiquette,  who  was 
never  tired  himself  and  who  believed  that  no  one 
else  should  weary.  When  he  went  on  his  brilliant 
campaigns, — where,  by  the  way,  he  never  saw  a  bat- 


212  New  England  Conscience 

tie, — Mme.  de  Maintenon  must  go  too.  She  must 
travel,  not  as  she  chose,  but  as  he  pleased,  over  hot 
and  dusty  roads;  she  must  eat  when  he  bade  her, 
must  be  gay  when  he  told  her,  must  applaud  and 
flatter  and  coax  as  her  old  despot  demanded.  And 
in  peace,  what  a  monotonous  round  of  dreary  dissi- 
pation. For  so  many,  and  at  such  hours  must  de 
Maintenon  give  audience  to  his  Majesty;  for  so 
many  hours  must  she  admit  all  the  court;  state  af- 
fairs, in  the  main,  have  to  be  transacted  in  her  pres- 
ence; she  must  allay  the  obvious  irritation  of  the 
ministers,  and  appear  to  take  no  part  in  their  coun- 
cils; yet  must  discreetly  reply  to  the  king's  ques- 
tions, advise  him  while  appearing  not  to  advise  him, 
and  always  conceal  from  him  the  fact  that  she  has 
the  intellect,  the  insight,  the  grasp  of  affairs  which 
his  Majesty  has  not. 

More  than  this,  she  has  to  be  a  general  peace- 
maker for  the  royal  family,  an  ever-ready  diplomate 
in  the  complicated  affairs  of  state,  an  intrigante  for 
the  good  of  the  Church, -and  a  general  confidente 
and  go-between  for  everyone  at  court.  The  king  and 
his  son,  the  stupid  Monseigneur,  are  always  at  log- 
gerheads; it  is  Mme.  de  Maintenon  who  must  recon- 
cile and  re-reconcile  them.  The  famous  Princess 
Orsini,  who  is  to  rule  the  young  ruler  of  Spain  and 
to  befriend  France  in  the  delicate  business  of  the 
Spanish  succession,  is  slighted  by  the  princes,  snub- 
bed by  the  king;  it  is  de  Maintenon  who,  with  in- 
finite labor,  must  repair  this  diplomatic  damage.  If 
the  ecclesiastics  are  ready,  as  they  generally  were,  to 
assure  Louis  that  the  king  can  do  no  wrong,  it  is  de 


Madame  de  Maintenon  213 


Maintenon  who  must  remind  him,  clearly  and  for- 
cibly, that  he  has  solemn  duties  and  distinct  obliga- 
tions. Through  the  long  desperate  years  of  the 
Spanish  succession  wars,  when  Louis,  as  he  once  cried 
out,  can  neither  stop  fighting  nor  go  on,  when,  at 
times,  France  herself  seems  slipping  from  his  grasp, 
— in  these  times  and  in  that  saddest  of  all  years  when 
the  Dauphin,  the  Duke  of  Burgundy,  the  Princess  of 
Savoy  and  the  Duke  of  Brittany  all  die,  and  to 
Louis  is  left  as  heir  only  a  sickly  infant  great- 
grandchild, it  is  then  that  he  goes  to  de  Maintenon 
for  comfort,  for  courage,  for  manliness  to  play  well 
his  part  as  king. 

Louis  XIV  delighted  in  artificiality  and  in  cir- 
cumlocution. As  is  the  habit  of  inferior  men  placed 
in  high  positions,  he  hedged  himself  about  with  mock 
greatness  and  created  unnecessary  obstacles  in  order 
to  gratify  his  vanity  by  overcoming  them.  So  arose 
Versailles,  seated  in  an  ugly  plain,  difficult  of  access, 
expensive  to  build  upon,  its  grounds  laid  out  in  stijff 
gardens  as  commonplace  as  his  majesty  himself.  Since 
the  region  is  destitute  of  water,  the  king  plans  vast 
fountains  as  its  chief  embellishment,  and  wastes  un- 
numbered lives  and  livres  in  trying  to  fetch  the  wa- 
ters of  the  Eure  to  this  sandy  desert.  Its  ruins  now 
add  a  sort  of  grandeur  to  the  estate  of  Maintenon 
which  the  stupendous  and  abortive  aqueduct,  in 
its  building,  made  uninhabitable.  This  comfortless 
palace  of  Versailles,  this  unfinished  and  ruinous 
aqueduct,  are  fit  symbols  of  the  latter  half  of  Louis 
XIV's  reign.  Instead  of  seizing  the  glorious  oppor- 
tunities which  were  easily  his,  instead  of  accepting 


214  New  England  Conscience 


and  enjoying  his  acknowledged  position  as  the  great- 
est ruler  of  his  day,  the  Grand  Monarque  must  spoil 
his  career  and  desolate  his  kingdom  by  building  up 
impossible  conditions  and  creating  artificial  obstacles. 
With  fatal  obstinacy  he  pursued  and  clung  to  the  un- 
natural, whether  it  were  the  clipping  of  hedges,  the 
restricting  of  trade,  or  the  dismemberment  of  em- 
pires. 

It  was  of  this  conventional  and  rigid  life  that  the 
free-spirited  Mme,  de  Maintenon  had  to  be  the  cen- 
tre; it  was  upon  most  shallow,  dull  and  unmoral 
people  that  her  unusual  gifts,  her  sober  intellect,  her 
consummate  tact  had  to  be  expended;  it  was  with 
a  declining  kingdom  and  an  aging  king  that  she  had 
to  deal;  and  it  was  with  all  that  was  most  wrong, 
foolish  and  unlucky  in  Louis'  reign  that  she  was 
most  closely  identified.  Francoise  d'Aubigne  hewed 
out  for  herself  a  wonderful  career;  but  over  what 
weary  obstacles  she  made  her  way! 

Her  only  haven  of  refuge  was  St.  Cyr,  the  school 
for  girls  which  she  had  founded.  There,  at  least, 
she  could  be  herself,  could  put  her  brains  to  good  use, 
speak  her  mind,  feel  that  she  was  doing  honestly 
and  seeking  worthily.  In  her  work  of  planning  and 
establishing  that  school  Mme.  de  Maintenon  appears 
at  her  best.  But  even  to  that  refuge  the  court  soon 
follows  her.  Before  she  realizes  it,  St.  Cyr  is  a  pub- 
lic show-place,  the  vain  preceptress  has  lost  her  head, 
the  girls  are  being  flattered  and  spoiled,  scandal  is 
imminent.  At  once  she  lays  down  rigid  rules  and 
converts  the  establishment, — which  she  had  planned 
to  be  unusually  free, — into  a  convent  school  of  the 


Madame  de  Maintenon  215 


severest  type. 

St.  Cyr  was  the  one  outside  interest  that  the  sel- 
fish king  permitted  to  his  wife;  and  it  was  the 
oxygen  breathed  there  that  gave  her  strength  and 
courage  to  carry  the  heavy  and  heavier  burdens 
which,  as  the  afifairs  of  France  grew  worse,  she  was 
called  upon  to  bear.  As  Marlborough  and  Eugene 
won  victory  after  victory,  as  Blenheim,  Ramillies, 
Oudenarde  and  Malplaquet  left  France  weaker 
and  poorer  and  more  humiliated,  the  popular  storm 
that  had  begun  with  the  Revocation  of  the  Edict  of 
Nantes  burst  upon  de  Maintenon  and,  at  times,  en- 
dangered her  life.  The  censure  that  the  people  dared 
not  visit  upon  the  king  was  hurled  against  her  in 
pamphlets,  in  street  songs,  in  gibes,  in  scurrilous  let- 
ters. She  was  regarded  as  Louis'  bad  angel,  she  was 
accused  of  every  crime; — of  instigating  the  Revoca- 
tion, of  pushing  the  Spanish  claims,  of  urging  wars, 
of  fostering  extravagance,  of  herself  stealing  mil- 
lions of  livres  from  the  royal  treasury.  It  was  even 
hinted  that  for  some  unexplained  reason  she  had 
poisoned  Monseigneur  and  the  Dauphin.  It  is  this 
conception  of  her,  heightened  by  St.  Simon's  slanders, 
which  has  come  down  to  us.  This  foul  harpy,  to 
most  persons,  represents  Mme.  de  Maintenon.  Truly 
she  was  not  a  saint;  but  to  the  unprejudiced  eye  it  .'s 
plain  that  she  never  used  her  piety  to  cloak  personal 
corruption  or  malice;  that  she  never  ceased  to  pray 
and  to  argue  against  all  warfare;  that,  with  every 
opportunity,  she  never  used  the  public  funds, — liv- 
ing, indeed,  in  a  fashion  almost  austere;  and  that, 
hounded    by    begging,    place-hunting    relatives    and 


2i6  New  England  Conscience 


friends,  she  seldom  misused  her  power  for  their  ag- 
grandizement. 

In  person  Mme.  de  Maintenon  was  more  majestic 
than  handsome,  her  face  was  intellectual  rather  than 
strictly  beautiful.  In  manners  she  was  suave,  oblig- 
ing and  possessed  of  marvelous  tact.  Her  mind  wa* 
of  English  solidity  rather  than  of  Gallic  quickness; 
therefore  her  letters,  while  interesting,  well-ex- 
pressed, and  often  witty,  have  little  of  the  sparkle 
of  Mme.  de  Sevigne's.  She  had  an  infinite  capacity 
for  work,  a  genius  for  administration,  and  a  fond- 
ness for  managing,  even  to  the  point  of  meddling. 

The  most  conspicuous,  the  most  admirable  trait 
in  Mme.  de  Maintenon  was  her  absolute  self-con- 
trol. She  was  inordinately  ambitious,  she  hungered 
for  admiration,  she  thirsted  for  power;  but  she 
knew  that  discretion,  dignified  humility  and  studied 
self-effacement  must  be  her  weapons  of  conquest; 
and  she  used  them  with  the  skill  and  persistency  of  a 
great  general.  It  was  not  her  beauty,  it  was  not 
her  wit  and  learning,  least  of  all  was  it  mere  good 
luck  that  created  her  social  fortunes;  it  was  brains. 
With  cleverness  alone,  however,  she  would  have  been 
a  mere  adventuress,  like  a  thousand  others.  For  her  ca- 
reer were  needed  other  attributes  which  in  generous 
measure  she  possessed :  a  sturdy  conscience  and  an 
intense  womanliness.  She  did  her  full  duty  as  Scar- 
ron's  wife,  she  neglected  nothing  in  the  rearing  of 
Montespan's  children,  through  every  provocation  she 
never  forgot  her  obligations  to  their  mother.  In  the 
midst  of  a  corrupt  court,  the  hourly  companion  of 
men  and  women  who  felt  themselves  bound  by  no 


Madame  de  Maintenon  217 


earthly  and  few  heavenly  laws,  called  upon  to  deal 
with  the  affairs  of  nations,  to  confer  with  and  to 
influence  statesmen  and  diplomatists,  to  play  a  man's 
part  as  adviser  of  Louis,  to  intrigue  against  the  wili- 
est ministers  and  ecclesiastics  of  Europe  in  one  of 
the  most  complicated  political  dramas  ever  played, 
de  Maintenon  never  lost  a  fraction  of  her  womanly 
grace,  her  dignity,  her  modesty,  one  might  almost  say, 
her  girlishness. 

Hers  was  the  power  of  the  magnet  which,  seem- 
ingly inert,  attracts  and  holds  with  astonishing  force. 
Having  by  her  care  of  his  children,  her  womanly 
qualities,  and  her  tact,  won  Louis,  she  never  re- 
laxed her  domination  over  him,  never  neglected  the 
slightest  thing  which  might  increase  her  hold.  Doubt- 
less she  honestly  believed  in  her  mission  to  convert  the 
king  to  godliness;  but  her  zeal  in  that  direction  did 
not  cause  her  to  forget  that  she  hoped,  too,  to  make 
Mme.  Scarron  powerful.  Hardly  expecting,  perhaps, 
to  become  Louis'  wife,  she  intended  to  become  at 
least  his  master.  Having  attained  the  greater  prize, 
her  secrecy  regarding  the  marriage  was  but  another 
triumph  of  diplomacy.  The  mystery  surrounding 
them,  the  consciousness  that  he  might  without  scan- 
dal retreat  from  them,  did  much  to  keep  the  fickle 
king  faithful  to  his  vows.  Moreover,  with  the  mar- 
riage acknowledged,  Mme.  de  Maintenon  would 
have  been  merely  a  despised  and  neglected  morganat- 
ic wife;  as  it  was  she  retained,  honorably,  all  the 
rights  and  authority  of  a  mistress. 

Was  that  authority  as  great  as  has  been  commonly 
believed?       De     Maintenon    probably    had     little 


21 8  New  England  Conscience 

power  of  initiative,  but  immense  power  of  veto, 
an  authority,  however,  which  she  by  no  means 
fully  exercised.  She  was  so  careful,  so  diplomatic, 
so  anxious  not  to  make  a  single  error  in  the  tre- 
mendous game  which  she  was  playing,  that  she  be- 
came overcautious,  missing  magnificent  opportuni- 
ties. She  came  into  power  too  late  to  stop  the  in- 
vasion of  Holland;  but  she  might  have  stayed  the 
ravaging  of  the  Palatinate ;  and  many  lesser  mistakes 
could  have  been  prevented  had  she  dared  to  risk 
an  open  quarrel  with  Louvois.  It  is  plain  that  she 
saw  the  folly  of  pushing  the  Spanish  claims;  but  she 
realized  that  it  would  be  humanly  impossible  to  dis- 
suade his  Most  Christian  Majesty  from  attempting 
to  add  Spain  and  Austria  to  his  dominions.  All  that 
could  be  done  was  to  mitigate  the  consequences  of 
his  rash  ambition. 

In  that  worst  blunder  of  Louis'  long  reign,  how- 
ever, the  Revocation  of  the  Edict  of  Nantes,  this 
pious,  wilful  woman  took  a  leading  part.  This  med- 
dling in  consciences  and  moulding  of  lives  was  just 
such  work  as  Mme.  de  Maintenon  liked.  Moreover, 
so  conspicuous  an  act  of  faith  as  this  was  the  best 
possible  advertisement  of  her  power  over  the  king,  of 
her  zeal  in  bringing  him  to  serve  the  Church.  But 
neither  she  nor  the  king  had  any  conception  of  what 
the  Revocation  or  the  acts  of  persecution  which  led 
up  to  it  implied.  They  were  not  cognizant  of,  they 
were  incapable  of  comprehending,  the  details  of  en- 
forcement. Hedged  in  by  courtiers  and  time-servers, 
they  heard  only  the  happy  results  of  his  Majesty's 
measures,   never   the  story  of  how   those   measures 


Madame  de  Maintenon  219 


were  carried  out.  The  king  repeatedly  declared 
against  the  use  of  force,  de  Maintenon  was  fully  sen- 
sible of  the  folly  of  gunpowder  conversions;  but 
both  were  convinced  that  heresy  is  a  disease ;  whole- 
sale apostasy,  therefore,  did  not  in  the  least  surprise 
them.  If  any  one  person  may  be  held  responsible 
for  the  senseless,  infamous  dragonnades,  for  the  ban- 
ishing of  some  of  the  best  blood  of  France,  it  is 
Louvois.  Had  he  been  honest  with  Louis,  had  it 
been  possible  for  anyone  to  tell  the  truth  to  that 
old  autocrat,  it  is  probable  that  the  king,  perhaps 
even  that  the  ultra-catholic  de  Maintenon,  would 
have  seen  the  folly,  if  not  the  wickedness,  of  the 
whole  affair.  But  his  Majesty  had  many  early  sins 
against  the  Church  to  atone  for, — how  better  than 
by  bringing  all  his  erring  sheep  back  to  the  fold 
of  Rome?  Mme.  de  Maintenon  had  piously  under- 
taken to  make  a  saint  of  this  notorious  sinner, — what 
clearer  evidence  of  her  zeal  and  its  success  than  this 
fatherly,  kingly  care  for  the  souls  of  his  people?  So 
the  wretched,  blundering  dismemberment  of  France 
went  on ;  and  she,  the  woman  who  was  an  apostate 
from  the  faith  of  her  fathers,  whose  religious  activity 
had  never  flagged,  who  held  the  king's  sceptre  in 
her  fine,  soft  hands,  she  was  and  is  held  mainly  ac- 
countable. But  on  a  question  of  faith  in  those  days 
of  religious  hate  and  frenzy,  who  can  rightly  judge? 


(^5 


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